


all that we see or seem

by rorschachs



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Colleagues to Friends to Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 20:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18977983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rorschachs/pseuds/rorschachs
Summary: “And what exactly is the job? You still haven’t explained that to me.”“A simple extraction.”“On Kevin Day. Anything concerning Kevin Day precludes simplicity.”---Nathaniel Wesninski would be perfectly happy dreaming for the rest of his life. Andrew Minyard offers him a way to do that. It goes as much to plan as can be expected.





	all that we see or seem

_I stand amid the roar_

_Of a surf-tormented shore,_

_And I hold within my hand_

_Grains of the golden sand —_

_How few! yet how they creep_

_Through my fingers to the deep,_

_While I weep — while I weep!_

_O God! Can I not grasp_

_Them with a tighter clasp?_

_O God! can I not save_

_One from the pitiless wave?_

_Is all that we see or seem_

_But a dream within a dream?_

 

Nathaniel Wesninski sat at a bar in Stuttgart, Germany, and considered taking a drink for the first time in years.

Drinking was never smart in his line of work to begin with. The line between reality and a dream was already so blurred that it would be irrational to further obscure it with alcohol, and he had never much liked the taste anyway. Alcohol had always been a poor substitute for an anesthetic when his father refused to involve doctors, the burn in the back of his throat synonymous with other kinds of pain.

Even years removed from that pain, he still couldn’t see the point of drinking for enjoyment. But tonight was a special occasion. Victory and mourning and elation all rolled into one, each emotion demanding expression.

“ _My father is dead_ ,” Nathaniel repeated in his head, and wondered what the bar’s few other patrons would think if he made it into a toast.

He hadn’t ordered anything yet, but the bartender didn’t seem to care. He’d spent most of the evening too absorbed in polishing cups and moving around shot glasses and doing whatever other things a bartender did to pay much attention to Nathaniel. In fact, nobody in the bar seemed to care much about him, which was why it was such a surprise when the bartender placed a glass in front of Nathaniel with a grunt, jerking his head towards the man who had somehow occupied the seat beside Nathaniel without him noticing.

A second later, the man spoke. “Nathaniel Wesninski.”

Nathaniel stiffened involuntarily, his gaze darting to the watch on his right hand. 10:03, with the second hand just a quarter of the way around its circuit. Reality.

“Do I know you?” he asked, fighting to keep his tone bland and uninterested.

“Not personally. But your reputation precedes you.” The man spoke in perfect English.

Nathaniel finally turned to face the stranger fully, taking him in. He was shorter than Nathaniel had realized at first glance, with blond hair and hazel eyes that met Nathaniel’s gaze easily.

“I heard about your father,” the man continued. “My condolences.”

He didn’t sound very sorry, but, then again, none of the people who had contacted him so far about his father had. The nurse who made the initial call had at least pretended to care, but after that, the string of phone calls had focused on business more than anything. He’d gotten calls from people he hadn’t thought knew about his existence, the very first call from-

“I have a business proposition for you,” the man said, interrupting his train of thought.

“I’m not taking any jobs right now,” Nathaniel said. “I’m in mourning.” He gestured vaguely to his surroundings.

“I think this one might be of interest to you. It concerns Kevin Day.”

Kevin Day. He hadn’t thought about that name in years, other than the vague whispers about what the Moriyama’s banished extractor was getting up to in the southern United States. At least, he hadn’t until a few days ago, when Nathaniel had suddenly been reminded of the man’s existence. Had it been in one of the phone calls? Had someone said he would be attending the funeral?

“I have no interest in Kevin Day,” Nathaniel said.

“Perhaps you should. His employers seem to have quite a lot of interest in you.”

“His employers?” Nathaniel asked blandly, ignoring the way the words sent a shiver of warning down his spine.

“There’s no need to play coy, Nathaniel. Everyone knows the Moriyama’s kept your father on a tight leash. Will you be taking his place, when you return to the States?”

“If I were taking my father’s place,” Nathaniel said slowly. “Then you should really be more careful about annoying me.”

The man seemed unconcerned. “It’s not your father’s talents I’m interested in. It’s yours.”

Nathaniel stared back at him silently.

“You haven’t touched your drink yet,” the man said, gesturing to the neglected glass that sat in front of him. “I find it’s always more pleasant to discuss business over drinks.”

“I’ve usually found the opposite.”

The man shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned to the bartender and ordered in heavily accented but passable German.

The bartender shot him a mutinous glare but set about mixing the drink. When he was done, he slammed the glass down on the table. The man picked it up, raised it to the bartender in a mocking toast, and downed it in one gulp. The bartender looked as if he was considering leaping over the bar at him.

“Have you been here before?” Nathaniel asked.

“A few times,” the man replied vaguely. “I doubt I left the best impression.”

That was a bit of an understatement. The other patrons had started to notice him as well, scowling at him out of the corner of their eyes, whispering to each other unhappily.

“I can’t imagine why; you’ve made such a good one with me,” Nathaniel said dryly.

“I’m not particularly interested in the impression I’m leaving. Like I said, I’m here on business.”

“And like _I_ said, I’m not taking on any jobs right now.”

The man seemed faintly amused at Nathaniel’s protests. “And what _are_ you doing Nathaniel? Running back to the Moriyama’s for your father’s funeral? Do you really think you’ll ever leave the States once you return?”

Nathaniel said nothing, but the man seemed unperturbed by his silence.

“It was fine for you to frolic around Germany and play at being your own man while your father fulfilled his obligations in Baltimore. But you’ll have to take his place when you return, and the Moriyama’s don’t care about your talents as an extractor or a forger. They just want a glorified executioner; you’ll be lucky if you set foot in someone else’s subconscious in the next decade.”

“You don’t know shit.”

It came out too emotional, too revealing. The worst part was that this man was doing nothing more than voicing the creeping worries that Nathaniel already had. The Moriyama’s already had plenty of talented extractors; they’d have little use for Nathaniel’s skills. And despite his father’s best efforts, he doubted he could take up the mantle of the Butcher of Baltimore to Kengo Moriyama’s satisfaction.

“I know that you’re a junkie. I know that you take on more jobs in a month than most extractors usually take on in a year. I know that you probably spend more time dreaming than awake these days. I’m simply offering you a way of maintaining your addiction.”

“Oh yeah? How?”

“With the money from this job, you could disappear for good. Spend the rest of your life in other people’s dreams.”

“The Moriyama’s would never let me go that easily.”

“The Moriyama’s will have other concerns if the job is successful.”

Nathaniel stared at him for a second. “If you think you can go against the Moriyama’s, you’re crazier than I thought.”

“No power is absolute.”

“They are.”

“With Kevin Day’s secrets, they won’t be.”

Nathaniel should leave. Even staying this long had been foolish; the Moriyama’s killed for less. Every second he entertained this man’s insane idea, he was tying the noose tighter around his own neck.

“Kevin Day is an expert extractor,” Nathaniel said instead. “He would notice any attempts to hack his subconscious in an instant.”

“Not if we have an expert forger.”

“What you’re suggesting is suicide.”

“Only if you’re bad at your job.”

Nathaniel fought off the urge to laugh. “My forgery won’t be the problem.”

“Then we can assuage the rest of your doubts later.” The man stood up, pulling his coat over his shoulders and slapping down a pile of bills on the bar. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Hang on,” Nathaniel said, reaching out to grab the man’s hand and then thinking better of it a second later. “I haven’t agreed to the job yet. You haven’t even explained what the job is.”

“I’m not explaining a delicate extraction job in public, or to a man who isn’t on my payroll yet. Take the job and you’ll get all of the details back at our temporary headquarters.” The man paused, looking down at Nathaniel. “Or run back to the Moriyama’s and get yourself killed in a few years. The choice is yours, Nathaniel.”

Then he was walking away, leaving Nathaniel staring silently after him until he’d disappeared through the door into the cool evening air.

Nathaniel sat for a moment, contemplating his untouched drink and then the bar in front of him. The mirror that covered the wall behind the bartender caught the reflection of the front windows, which in turn reflected the mirror, creating an infinite loop like one of the paradoxes the architects he worked with were so fond of making. It seemed strange, having a mirror like that in a bar. Nathaniel doubted most people wanted to see themselves in a place like this.

The man was probably right. If Nathaniel went back to the Moriyama’s, it was only a matter of time until they tired of his inability to live up to the name of the Butcher of Baltimore, just as his father had. But taking a job like this just seemed like a faster way to die. He’d meant what he’d said; going up against the Moriyama’s was suicide. They had people everywhere; someone would probably kill him the moment he hooked himself up to the PASIV. Or Kevin Day would realize what was happening, shoot himself awake, and then shoot Nathaniel.

But at least he would die dreaming.

He could at least hear the man out. Following him to his headquarters wasn’t the same as signing a contract, and he doubted that a man that small could really stop him from leaving if he changed his mind. Maybe he could even sell the information back to the Moriyama’s, buy himself a little more time before his usefulness ran out.

His father would tell him he was being stupid. His mother, too, probably one of the only things the two of them would ever agree upon. He’d still outlived them both.

Nathaniel picked up the glass in front of him, choked it down in a single swallow, and ran to catch the other man with the burn of alcohol still in his throat.

 

* * *

 

The man was waiting for him just outside the bar, leaning against its exterior wall and smoking a cigarette. He didn’t say anything as Nathaniel approached, just tossed the cigarette to the ground and stepped out to the edge of the curb to hail a cab.

“I don’t even know your name,” Nathaniel said after they had climbed into the taxi and the man had given the driver a mumbled address in his choppy German.

“You never bothered to ask.”

“I’m asking now.”

The man regarded Nathaniel with a small smirk. “I’ve already given you quite a lot of truths.”

“You’ve given me almost nothing. Besides, you already know my name. It seems only fair we’re on even footing.”

“You don’t complete an extraction job on even footing. I’d have thought you’d know that by now.”

The taxi took a sharp turn and Nathaniel automatically reached out to grip the door, regretting the sign of fear a second later when the man’s eyes instantly caught on it.

“You don’t like cars?” the man asked.

“I prefer to walk.” Nathaniel couldn’t quite affect the casual tone he was striving for.

The man considered him for a moment longer. “Andrew Doe.”

“That’s your name? Doe?”

“It’s what you can call me.”

Nathaniel closed his eyes, tilting his head back against the seat and trying to ignore the jolt of the car as the taxi took another turn. “Is the entire job going to be this exhausting?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be getting plenty of sleep.”

Nathaniel’s lips quirked up into a smile almost unwillingly.

The rest of the drive went relatively quickly, almost surprisingly so for the usual traffic that plagued the streets. Nathaniel got out of the cab before Andrew had finished paying the driver, finally taking a full breath for the first time since the vehicle had started moving. They were in an area of the city he didn’t instantly recognize, not too remarkable since most of his jobs kept him indoors. The taxi had stopped in front of a large warehouse that looked mostly abandoned, but Andrew didn’t hesitate before striding up to the door and pushing through.

“You don’t lock the place?” Nathaniel asked, jogging to catch up.

“That would require having the keys, so no.”

They had entered a large room that looked like it might have been used for storage once. The flooring consisted of chipped concrete with a few suspicious looking stains, and large pillars interspersed throughout the room supported the weight of the massive arching ceiling. Windows tucked at the top of the walls provided a bit of natural lighting, with large hanging industrial bulbs providing the rest. Someone had transformed the far left corner into a series of separate rooms through the creative use of paneled dividers and hanging curtains, and the right corner contained what Nathaniel assumed would serve as the workshop for the job.

Two men lounged in what looked like stolen pool chairs, both looking up upon Andrew and Nathaniel’s entrance.

“Everything go smoothly?” asked the one who looked nearly identical to Andrew.

Andrew jerked his head towards Nathaniel. “Obviously.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to the job yet,” Nathaniel said, but the protest sounded weak even to him. If he hadn’t intended to work with them, he wouldn’t have gotten in the cab.

“This is Aaron,” Andrew said, gesturing towards his double and completely ignoring Nathaniel’s comment. “He’s the architect for the job. Nicky’s usually our forger, but he’ll be fulfilling other duties while you’re here.”

“Do you have a chemist?”

“Our usual chemist, Renee, is otherwise occupied,” said the other man, Nicky. “She’s provided all of the necessary supplies, though.”

Nathaniel stared at Andrew and hoped his expression conveyed exactly how unimpressed he was. “You’re doing this without a chemist and a forger you barely know? Against the Moriyama’s? If you have a death wish you didn’t have to drag me into it.”

“Our team is necessarily small,” Andrew replied, taking a seat in one of the free pool chairs and gesturing for Nathaniel to sit down as well. “We have everyone we need to get the job done.”

Nathaniel sat across from him after a moment’s hesitation. “And what exactly is the job? You still haven’t explained that to me.”

“A simple extraction.”

“On Kevin Day. Anything concerning Kevin Day precludes simplicity.”

Andrew didn’t smile but his lips twitched. “I’m sure you’re aware of the Moriyama’s considerable wealth, given that they spend so much of it on your father’s tight leash. Spent, I should say.”

“I think anyone with eyes is aware of the Moriyama’s wealth.”

“Unfortunately for them, that includes the U.S. government. Given the nature of most of their investments, they’ve had to find some workarounds over the past few years. Offshore accounts, fraudulent businesses, you get the picture.”

“If you’ve done your research, you know I get the picture.”

“I just want to point out,” Nicky said from his chair, “that when I interrupt this much during your monologues, I get a gun to my head.”

“That rule is still in place,” Andrew said, not looking away from Nathaniel. “I have done my research. And my research reveals a frankly absurd amount of bank accounts in Kevin Day’s name. More than a dream-sharer should have. More even than he’s earned through his less legal extractions.”

“You think they’re using him to funnel money.”

“I know they are. A small price to pay for the independence he’s been granted in the South.”

“Independence? I’ve heard it was closer to exile.”

Andrew shrugged. “I don’t particularly care about his personal feelings on the matter.”

“You care about the account passwords.”

This time Andrew did smile. “Got it in one. The Moriyama’s have put far too much confidence in their lapdog; if we drained the accounts it would take them years to recover.”

“And you’re doing this, what, out of some misplaced sense of justice? Trying to take down a criminal empire?”

“You can think of it that way if you like. You can also consider the fact that the money has to be drained _to_ somewhere. I see no reason why it can’t be us.”

Nathaniel considered him for a moment, leaning back in his seat. “You’re insane,” he decided at last.

“It’s been said.”

It was true. Andrew had to be insane, to think any plan going against the Moriyama’s could work. Especially a plan with a team of four that involved extracting information from _Kevin Day_. Nathaniel shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of going along with it. And yet…

“Say you could get the information from Day,” Nathaniel said. “How would you even get him dreaming?”

“Day has a surgery scheduled this week with a Doctor Söderburg in Frankfurt. An experimental procedure to try and regain some motion in that pesky hand of his. He’ll be under for about three hours; we have a twenty-minute window at the beginning to complete the job.”

“And Day just happened to pick a surgeon in Germany?”

“There was an incident with his usual doctor. Dr. Söderburg reached out and offered him a novel treatment, on the condition Kevin came to him.”

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow.

“Medical school loans are a bitch to pay off.”

“Even if that did work, it would only give you four hours. You expect to perform an extraction on Kevin Day in four hours?”

“That’s why we went to Renee,” Nicky said, ignoring Andrew’s glare at the interruption. “With the sedatives she’s designed, we get twenty minutes for every minute in the waking world instead of twelve. Go down two levels and we’ve got all the time we need.”

Nathaniel’s gaze bounced to Nicky and then back to Andrew. “If these sedatives work so well, why isn’t everyone using them?”

Andrew shrugged. “They aren’t without cost. With a sedative this strong, death doesn’t wake you up. Only gravity works as a kick; anything else and you just go deeper.”

This time Nathaniel couldn’t hold back his incredulous laugh. “So you expect to go up against Kevin Day, in his subconscious, and not get shot?”

“His mind isn’t militarized. You should know, Nathaniel; you’re the same way. A militarized subconscious is too risky for an extractor, too many chances of bringing in an unhappy projection.”

“He doesn’t need a militarized mind; he’ll shoot you himself the moment he realizes he’s dreaming.”

“He won’t realize he’s dreaming. I’ve already told you, I did my research. If Day checks his token down there, he’ll be safely reassured that he’s completely awake.”

Nathaniel stared at Andrew for a moment. “You know Kevin Day’s token.”

“This isn’t a half-formed plan, Nathaniel; you’re entering it at the final stages.”

“If your plan is so solid, why do you even need me?”

“You accepted the job before you heard the job description?” Aaron asked.

“I haven’t accepted anything yet.”

“Your role is two-fold,” Andrew said, still ignoring everyone but Nathaniel. “Two different characters for two different levels.”

“And who exactly am I supposed to be?”

“The lowest level will take place at the Moriyama’s annual banquet. I’ll approach Day there, make him think about the accounts so that the password is the only thing on his mind when he wakes up from that dream. We’ll perform the extraction itself on the first level, in Day’s home in South Carolina.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Nathaniel said, even though he already got the sinking feeling he knew exactly who he would be asked to play.

“I’m explaining the context. On the lowest level, we want Day just the right level of agitated. I’ll be the one bringing up the accounts, but Kevin Day isn’t intimidated by strangers.”

Andrew paused, obviously waiting for Nathaniel to fill in the gap himself.

“He’s intimidated by Riko Moriyama.” Nathaniel’s meant it to sound disbelieving, but it came out resigned more than anything.

“And who better to play a Moriyama than the son of one of their most loyal servants?”

“I haven’t seen Riko Moriyama in years; I’d have to learn all of his mannerisms from scratch anyway. You’d be just as well off hiring a random forger.”

“I never took you for modest, Nathaniel. But you’re right. Skill alone wouldn’t be enough for me to put up with another dream junkie on the job. It’s the other level that truly matters. When Day wakes up, he needs to think he’s under attack. His first instinct will be to protect the password, and that’s how we’ll find it. But we also need someone on the inside, someone to wake him up and tell him he’s in danger. Someone who’s not close enough to know the codes, but who he’ll trust just enough through their shared connection to the Moriyama’s to lead to his secrets.”

Andrew didn’t exactly look like he was enjoying himself, but he said the next words with more mocking pleasure than Nathaniel had heard from him since they’d met. “We need you to play Nathaniel Wesninski.”

 

* * *

 

**Twelve Years Before**

_Nathaniel was ten the first time he truly dreamed._

_Maybe he had dreamed before. Muddled strands of the subconscious, glimpses of other worlds or flying or claws tearing into his chest. So vague that, as an adult, they would become nearly inseparable from true memories of his childhood. It didn’t matter, anyway; by the age of twelve, he stopped dreaming without chemicals altogether._

_The first time, he sat in the parlor with his mother, a mug of hot chocolate clasped between his hands and his legs curled beneath him on the couch. He was two sips into the drink before he remembered with a start that he wasn’t supposed to eat in the parlor, not when the upholstery stained so easily and the maids whispered every misstep back to his father. His body tensed with an all-too-familiar panic, fingers clenching around the mug, and then his mother smiled at him._

_He knew something wasn’t right when he saw the smile. She never smiled like that in here, not when daylight still shone through the curtains and the threat of his father’s presence hung over the whole room. The smile seemed to transform her face, and when he looked closer he could see that something was transformed. Her hair shone a little brighter, the beginnings of wrinkles around her forehead had smoothed over, the dark bruise on the arch of her cheek and the fingerprints around her wrist had vanished._

_“Where are we?” he asked, because he could think of no other question._

_“Good job, Nathaniel,” she said, and the praise was something new as well. “Always question your surroundings. But there’s an even more important question you need to ask yourself too.”_

_She paused, taking a sip from the teacup he could have sworn hadn’t been in her hands a moment before._

_“Ask yourself, am I awake?”_

_Three books exploded from the bookshelf almost in slow motion, a flurry of pages whirling around the room above their heads. Nathaniel tried to breathe and realized he couldn’t._

_“Calm down, Nathaniel,” his mother said, still so composed. “Keep the dream intact.”_

_It was instinct by now, to obey her, and Nathaniel was forcing deep breaths into his lungs before he truly understood the words. The pages drifted to the floor, melting into the floorboards a second later and disappearing as if they had never existed._

_“I’m dreaming?”_

_“We both are. Think about how you got here.”_

_It was like reaching out and having his hand close around thin air. He knew he was here, now, in the parlor. He knew he had gone to sleep the night before in his bed, woken up before the first rays of sunlight made their way into his room and slipped away to find his mother. Had he found her? He must have if they were sitting in the parlor, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what had happened in between._

_“You need to think about this always, Nathaniel,” she said. “Never accept your world for reality. Always ask yourself how you came to be here, who it serves for you to be here.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_“You’re an investment, Nathaniel. For your father. For the people he works for. They want to take you away from me, shape you into a tool.”_

_A window shattered, but the shards of glass transformed into flashes of light before hit the ground._

_“But I don’t want to go!” It came out sounding too childish; even at ten, he knew better than to ask for things he couldn’t have._

_“It doesn’t matter what you want, Nathaniel, only what you can do for them.”_

_She stood abruptly, and suddenly it wasn’t his mother walking towards him, but Lola. Nathaniel scrambled back in his seat, spilled hot chocolate searing into his skin and panic rising in his throat, but when Lola spoke it was in his mother’s voice._

_“If you listen to me carefully, if you do exactly what I say, they’ll have no choice but to let me keep you.”_

_She grasped his hands, and now it was his mother kneeling in front of him, squeezing so tightly he could feel the bones shift beneath his skin._

_“I’ll turn you into a tool they can’t refuse.”_

_Nathaniel blinked his eyes open hours later and realized with a sinking sensation that he no longer felt awake._

 

* * *

 

Maybe, in another life, Nathaniel would have said no. Maybe he would have laughed in Andrew’s face, or turned and ran away, or never have been in Germany to hear the offer in the first place. But Nathaniel knew himself at least well enough to know how to survive, and he also knew that he couldn’t ever really say no to the opportunity to dream a little longer.

He fought it, of course. Claimed that he could never truly forge Riko Moriyama, that he would be killed if word ever got around that he had even tried. Pointed out that Kevin Day hadn’t seen Nathaniel Wesninski in years, that Day would have no reason to truly trust him.

Andrew barely pretended to listen. Nathaniel hated him for it, a little, because maybe they both knew that Nathaniel would say yes, but he could at least pretend that it was an argument. But it didn’t matter in the end. Nathaniel would say yes because it meant he would dream, and dreaming was the one weakness his father had never managed to beat out of him.

Nicky showed him to the curtained off area that would serve as his bedroom, already prepared in yet another infuriating show of arrogance on Andrew’s part, and Nathaniel fell asleep trying to pretend that taking this job wasn’t signing his death sentence.

 

* * *

 

The first issue appeared the next day, only minutes into Andrew’s briefing.

“What do you mean we’re not doing any practice runs?” Nathaniel demanded.

“Exactly what I just said, Nathaniel. Would you like me to repeat it for you in German?”

“You expect us to go in blind?”

“You won’t be blind. Aaron’s already designed both levels; he’ll walk you through it as many times as you need.”

“Talking or looking at diagrams is nothing compared to actually being there.”

“And yet somehow you will prevail.”

“You can’t just–“

Andrew pushed away from the table he had been leaning on, shoving past Nathaniel on his way to a small door tucked in the back of the warehouse. “You’re not the one making these decisions, Wesninski. I’m taking a smoking break. Aaron, you deal with him.”

Aaron did not appear any more excited about that prospect than Nathaniel felt.

“He can’t be serious,” Nathaniel said to him as soon as Andrew was gone.

“Did he strike you as the joking type?”

“It’s insane,” Nathaniel persisted. “How can any of you be okay with going in with zero prep?”

“We’ve had plenty of preparation,” Aaron snapped. “If you don’t think you’re up for the job, just say so.”

“I’m not up to getting killed the moment we step foot in Day’s dreams,” Nathaniel grumbled, but joined Aaron at the table to look over the diagrams anyway.

The two levels were relatively simple, all things considered. The first level would never go beyond Day’s house in South Carolina, and Andrew had assured him that they were certain it would hold up under close scrutiny. Nathaniel had given up on asking him what exactly their “research” entailed; he got the feeling it would just make him feel worse about the entire endeavor.

The house was three stories in total, but if things went to plan Nathaniel would only be working on the first two floors. The dining room, bathroom, and office were the main rooms of concern, and Aaron walked him through all the possible routes until Nathaniel’s eyes began to blur. It still felt like a poor substitute for walking the routes in person.

The second level was slightly bigger, but not by much. This dream took place in one of the ostentatious events the Moriyama’s were so fond of throwing, located in a generic banquet hall in which the details weren’t nearly as important. Nathaniel only truly needed to worry about the bathrooms, the main hall itself, and one of the side rooms where he and Kevin would inevitably end up, but Aaron insisted on talking through all of the hidden corridors and impossible architecture he had built in.

Normally, Nathaniel would have appreciated the attention to detail, but the resentment for having to rely solely on pictures still ate at him and he caught himself zoning out too many times for a professional. Eventually, his already short patience ran out, and he left the table while Aaron was still halfway through a sentence.

“Where are you going?” Aaron demanded.

“To get some air,” Nathaniel snapped back.

The door that Andrew had disappeared through seemed like his best bet for a break. Pushing through it put him at the base of a small metal staircase, eventually leading to the roof of the building. It only took a few seconds for Nathaniel to find Andrew, perched on the ledge with his feet dangling over the side and a cigarette tucked between his lips.

“Did Aaron finally get to you?” Andrew asked as Nathaniel approached, not looking away from the skyline. Clouds blurred the horizon, making their surroundings look like the smudged background of a painting.

“Your brother is almost as irritating as you are.”

Nathaniel took a seat beside Andrew and the other man turned, leisurely blowing smoke into his face. It took Nathaniel a second to remember to turn away, to wince and cough as if the acrid smoke wasn’t almost comforting.

“I seem to have an unfortunate habit of picking irritating coworkers,” Andrew said. “You’re not proving to be an exception.”

Nathaniel plucked the cigarette from Andrew’s fingers and took a long drag of his own, blowing the smoke out slowly and letting the smell linger. He didn’t usually allow himself the comfort of a cigarette; he didn’t trust the way a nicotine addiction might impact his dreams and it brought back too many memories anyway. There was his mother, tucked in the corner of her little garden where she would sneak smokes when his father wasn’t paying attention, but there was also the burning fumes of rubber and gasoline, building up until he was nearly choking on it.

He had been quiet for too long, but Andrew didn’t seem to mind the silence. Eventually, he took the cigarette back, but even then he made no attempt to strike up a conversation. It was strange; usually Nathaniel would have relished the escape from speaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually wanted to hear someone else talk. And yet–

“Why did you pick this job, anyway?”

Andrew’s gaze shifted from the skyline to Nathaniel and he tilted his head in a silent question.

“I mean, going up against the Moriyama’s. There have to be jobs without such a high mortality rate. Even with the money, is it really worth it?”

“You seem to think so.”

“The Moriyama’s are aware of my existence no matter what. You have no reason to get involved.”

 “Maybe I just like kicking hornets’ nests.”

“I don’t think that’s it, though.”

“And what are you prepared to do to find out?”

He could just drop it. It didn’t really matter to him what Andrew’s motivations were; none of these people mattered to him. All he needed to do was do the job, get the money, and get out. But he was curious, and Nathaniel couldn’t remember the last time he had felt that.

“A truth for a truth.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “That’s a dangerous game, for our line of work. Are you so sure you want to give all your secrets away, Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel hesitated. “Fine, then. If it’s a question we don’t want to or can’t answer, we say so, and pick another truth.”

“And what if a non-answer is answer enough? What if you ask, ‘Are you going to kill me?’ and I refuse to answer? That’s a truth of its own.”

“Are you going to kill me?” Nathaniel asked.

Andrew’s lips quirked into what was almost a smile. “Not for a job.”

“That’s comforting.”

“My turn.

Anyone else and he would have protested, but this back and forth with Andrew was so enjoyable that he almost didn’t mind.

Andrew considered him for a moment, drumming his fingers on the edge of the roof as he thought. “Why are you here?”

“Is that existential, or…”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “Why are you here, in Germany? Rumor has it your old man wasn’t exactly fond of you, but you still would have had a place in Baltimore. The Butcher’s son wouldn’t have to scrounge for jobs.”

“Not the kind of jobs I would want. At least here people hire me for my forgery skills. Or at least, most of them do.” There was still a bitter ache at the thought that Andrew had sought him out because of his identity and not his talents.

It was a vague answer, but Andrew let him get away with it, gesturing for Nathaniel to ask his next question. This time, Nathaniel could ask what he’d truly wanted to know.

“Why did you choose this specific job?”

Andrew was silent for a long moment, taking another drag from the cigarette and blowing the smoke out slowly. Nathaniel watched the way his lips curled around the cigarette, how surprisingly long his fingers looked around it for such a short man.

“I’m repaying an old debt,” Andrew said at last. “Someone did me a favor once, and this is my end of the bargain.”

“Must have been some favor.”

Andrew shrugged, not answering.

Nathaniel couldn’t resist the urge to keep pushing. “The Moriyama’s have destroyed people for less. Is it really worth getting their attention?”

“If the job goes correctly, they’ll never know it was me. Besides, you’re in more danger than I am. The Butcher’s death left a power vacuum and I doubt the Moriyama’s relish the idea of you filling it. You were going to return to the States for the funeral before I approached you; what would have stopped them from killing you the moment the plane landed?”

And that, that was a truth worth bargaining for. What stood between Nathaniel and the Moriyama’s bullets was a six-digit code, whispered to him on the day of his mother’s funeral and burned into his mind ever since.

“My father was loyal to the Moriyama’s, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew they could turn on him at a moment’s notice, so he kept his own insurance.”

Andrew tilted his head in a silent command to continue.

“There’s a safe, back in his home in Baltimore, with evidence that could put them away for good. No bribery, no second-chances – the whole organization would come crashing down. Of course, my father would be implicated as well, but at least he’d drag them down with him. He and I were the only ones who knew the code.”

“That’s a lot of trust to put in a prodigal son.”

“My mother knew it, before me. He needed someone else to have the code as well so that we could turn over the evidence in case the Moriyama’s ever killed him. It worked, too; the Moriyama’s never touched him. It’s too bad cancer can’t be blackmailed.”

“And have you given the code to anyone else?”

“Of course not.”

“Then I ask again, what’s to stop the Moriyama’s from killing you? It would certainly tie up loose ends.”

“I was going to give it to them. At my father’s funeral. They could destroy the evidence for good, and in exchange, I could come back to Germany and disappear.”

It wasn’t pity in Andrew’s eyes. Closer to disappointment. “And you really think that would have worked?”

No. No, but when the Moriyama’s called, you answered. His father had taught him that much, at least.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Nathaniel said. “If your plan works, I’ll never see them again anyway.”

“The plan will work as long as you play your part.”

His turn, again. “Why am I so important to the plan anyway? I’m not the only forger out there, and there are plenty of people Day trusts more than Nathaniel Wesninski. How did you even find me? How do you know so much about me?”

“I already told you, Wesninski. We did our research, and you leave more of a trail then you might think.”

“That’s not a real answer.”

“It’s what I’m giving you, though.”

“You can’t just tell me that and expect me to be satisfied!”

Andrew grabbed his wrist, squeezing hard and shoving Nathaniel back slightly as he released him. “Get used to disappointment, Nathaniel.”

He stood abruptly, flicking the butt of the cigarette over the edge of the roof and turning back towards the stairs. “I’m going back to work. You should too.”

He left before Nathaniel could get another word in, gone as quickly as a dream upon waking.

 

* * *

 

Aaron and Nicky were gone when Nathaniel got back downstairs, so he grabbed a pile of the blueprints Aaron had designed from the table and settled in to go over them again. They truly were well-designed; he had to give Aaron that. A simple elegance that lent just enough believability to the world. He’d seen too many architects try to make every aspect of the dream perfect and leave themselves open to failure. With the details smoothed over, the subject usually filled the rest in on their own.

It took him a shameful amount of time to notice the missing weight on his wrist. He shifted to turn a page, felt his skin glide against the table a bit too smoothly, and then the breath was suddenly gone from his lungs as quickly as if he’d been sucker-punched.

On his right wrist where his watch should be there was only the pale gleam of his own flesh. Nathaniel squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and opened them again, but the vision remained unchanged. Panic burned like acid in his lungs, every muscle tensing in preparation for a futile flight.

Nathaniel forced himself to remain still, carefully going over the past few hours in his mind. Did he know how he had gotten here? He remembered everything from the conversation on the rooftop, remembered coming back downstairs and sitting down at the table, no suspicious gaps. Had something happened before that, then? In the moments when he had first woken up that morning, in the misty haze just before he’d fallen asleep?

It was also possible he was still awake, and the missing watch was the first step in a plan. Or maybe he had lost it, and all of this panic was for nothing. But he couldn’t ask the others about it, not without revealing that the watch was important to him. Besides, there was no chance the watch had just slipped off. Someone must have taken it, maybe while he slept, or while he was distracted by the plans, or–

“You seem stressed, Nathaniel,” Andrew said, appearing suddenly at the head of the table. “Looking for this?”

He tossed something onto the table casually. The watch spun three times before it came to a stop in front of Nathaniel, its cracked face gleaming in the low light of the warehouse.

Nathaniel stared down at the watch, anger rising like bile in the back of his throat. “You had no fucking right.”

Andrew didn’t seem impressed by his display of emotion. “It’s too obvious of a totem anyway. Anyone could discover the right time as long as they’d seen you at least once before the dream.”

“Not if they don’t realize the watch is important in the first place!”

“You check it like a nervous tic, Nathaniel. Any idiot could figure it out. I know, because Nicky did.”

“It’s worked fine every other time.”

“This isn’t every other time,” Andrew snapped. “This job requires absolute perfection. If Nicky knows, then you can be sure as hell the Moriyama’s know, and that means there’s every chance Kevin does too. If he sees it ticking, then our whole cover is blown.”

Nathaniel hated him. He hated that Andrew had managed to steal the watch in the first place, hated that he had taken something so sacred and treated it like an amateur’s mistake. He hated that he was right.

“Fuck you.”

Andrew nodded, rapping the table with his knuckles twice and then turning to leave. “Figure it out, Wesninski. There won’t be any more second chances.”

 

* * *

 

Of all his new team members, Nicky was the least unbearable. That truly wasn’t saying much, but it meant that Nathaniel did his best to stick near him during their debriefings and preparation. He still couldn’t look at Andrew without his skin burning with fury, made even worse by the fact that Andrew had been right about the watch’s vulnerability.

Nathaniel knew that it was foolish to design a totem based on something so personal, that it was only setting himself up for pain, but no one had ever had the gall to point it out before. He still wore the watch around the warehouse, but he knew he couldn’t bring it down with him on the job. Even through the anger, he understood that it wasn’t the end of the world. He’d be aware that he was dreaming regardless.

 On the second day, Nathaniel found himself alone in the warehouse with Nicky, Andrew and Aaron off doing something mysterious on the roof. He was technically meant to be flipping through a folder filled to the brim with photos of Riko, featuring almost every expression the other man had ever made, but Nathaniel couldn’t stomach looking at a Moriyama for too long in one sitting. Nicky didn’t seem particular occupied with whatever he was doing either, and talking to him was as good a distraction as any.

“Why do you work with these assholes, anyway?”

Maybe not the smoothest of conversation openings, but Nathaniel didn’t really care what the other man thought of him.

Nicky didn’t seem offended, anyway; if anything he looked amused. “I’m their cousin, actually.”

Nathaniel glanced pointedly at Nicky’s dark skin and curly hair. “Really?”

“I know,” Nicky sighed, tossing aside the file he had been perusing. “I got all the looks in the family.”

“And Andrew got the psychopathic tendencies?”

“He and Aaron split them, actually.”

“But seriously,” Nathaniel persisted. “Andrew and Aaron don’t seem to like each other either. Why work together? Any of you?”

“Do you work extraction jobs for the lifelong friendships?”

Nathaniel tilted his head in concession. “Still. Nobody’s forcing them to work together if they hate each other so much.”

Nicky sighed. “It’s not that they hate each other. Their relationship is just…complicated.”

“You’ve done enough invasive research into my life to know that I’m familiar with complicated family relationships.”

“Andrew did most of the research, actually. He would only tell us the important parts.”

“What, am I supposed to be grateful for the illusion of privacy?”

Nicky shifted in his chair, pointedly not meeting Nathaniel’s eyes. “It’s the job.”

Nathaniel couldn’t help but wonder how Nicky had survived in the extraction business this long when he seemed to care so much about other people liking him. If he were a better person, Nathaniel might suggest he get a thicker skin. As it was, he wasn’t above using Nicky’s craving for friendship to his own advantage.

“It’s still unfair, don’t you think?” he asked. “You all know so much about me and I’m coming in blind. The extraction will go smoother if we’re comfortable around each other.”

Nicky’s mouth twisted in an unhappy grimace. “Andrew said the same thing.”

“And Andrew is doing a shit job of making me feel comfortable, so shouldn’t you pick up the slack?”

Nicky sighed, glancing around the warehouse as if Andrew or Aaron might burst from behind a corner at any second and shoot him for giving away the family secrets. When he finally seemed satisfied that his life wasn’t in imminent danger, he turned back to Nathaniel.

“Aaron and Andrew didn’t actually grow up together. Their mother raised Aaron, but Andrew grew up in the foster care system.”

“She only kept one of them? That’s fucked up.”

Nicky shrugged. “There’s more to it than that, but that’s not what really matters. Their mom had a lot of problems, and by the time Aaron was sixteen she was into dream sharing. I don’t know how much she exposed him to it; he doesn’t like to talk about those times much. None of us knew how bad it was until she went under one day and never came back up. By the time we arrived for the funeral, Aaron had already disappeared.

“Andrew probably never would have known about any of this, but there was a problem with the will. The whole process with Andrew hadn’t exactly been above board, and she’d never gotten anything notarized, so one of the lawyers tracked Andrew down to tell him he stood to inherit some money if he took it to court. That’s how Andrew found me, trying to figure out what had happened to his brother.

“By the time Andrew did find Aaron, he was hooked up to a PASIV in a basement in India for nearly twenty hours a day. Completely addicted to dreaming. I’m not even sure how he could still afford the chemist’s fee; he never stuck around for what little his mother had left him. Andrew tried to go under himself and get him, but Aaron’s brains were nearly scrambled at that point. Andrew had to bring in an outside expert in dreaming just to keep the dream stable enough to talk to Aaron.”

“Who did he bring in?” Nathaniel asked.

“Does it matter?”

Maybe not, but Andrew had said he was repaying an old debt, and Nathaniel couldn’t think of a favor much bigger than saving his twin’s life. If he knew who it was, maybe he could gain a little insight into the job. At least enough insight to keep him alive a little bit longer.

“No,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual. “Just curious; it always helps to know the big players in this field.”

“You wouldn’t know him, anyway,” Nicky said. “I think he’s retired. But whatever he did, it worked. I still don’t know what Andrew said to Aaron down there to get him to wake up, but within a few months the two were working jobs together.”

“And how did you come into the mix?”

“I was working a dead-end job, my parents had kicked me out, I had no way of paying for college…I was willing to take any job I could get. Maybe Andrew still thought he owed me for helping him find Aaron; I don’t know, but he offered me an in on a job and I never really stopped. Turns out I’ve got a knack for forging.”

He paused, looking Nathaniel up and down. “Although not anything approaching your talents, or so I’ve heard.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Nathaniel said.

“That’s all it is? Practice?”

Nathaniel smiled tightly. “I’m living proof of that, aren’t I?”

“So there are no secrets of the trade you can give me?” Nicky’s voice was light, joking, but his gaze was shrewd.

“Nothing you would want to know.”

Nicky stared at him for a long moment and Nathaniel was struck by the sudden sensation that Andrew wasn’t the only one keeping parts of himself concealed.

“Yeah,” Nicky said at last, “I think you might be right.”

 

* * *

 

**Eleven Years Before**

_Nathaniel was eleven the first time he slipped into another skin. He'd been trying for the past few months, ever since his mother had decided he could construct his dreams with enough stability to move on to what really mattered, but so far he had only managed to make the smallest of tweaks. His hair might shift a shade or two in color, his eyes might flicker between gray and brown, but he could only ever hold it for a few minutes, and he was always recognizable as himself._

_This time, when he entered the dream, the sickening burn of his shoulder followed him down. He didn’t have to look to know what he would find: seared, almost melted skin still raw and moist. Pain was supposed to be diluted in dreams, but if anything it felt stronger here. The walls of the room he had dreamed pulsed in time with his heartbeat, the air stiflingly hot._

_“You need to calm down, Nathaniel,” his mother said, an echo of their first dream together. “Pain is in the mind; you can control this too.”_

_His breath was coming too fast, even in the dream, even when the oxygen wasn’t even real. He couldn’t stop staring at it, the outline of the iron scorched onto his body, the pain so visceral that his father might as well still be crushing it against his skin._

_“Nathaniel,” his mother snapped, but he couldn’t bring himself to look away._

_“Nathaniel!” And this time it was her fingers digging into his chin, her hand yanking his head up until he was forced to meet her eyes._

_“It hurts,” he choked out, knowing he was too old to complain like this but unable to stop himself. “I can’t–“_

_“Control yourself,” she hissed, and maybe she was covering the panic with anger or maybe anger was all there was, frustration over a son who couldn’t do what he was told._

_“I don’t want to do this anymore!” And now his voice was nearly a wail, the walls shuddering and the floor bucking beneath them._

_She slapped him, openhanded across his cheek, and for a moment the shock of the blow was enough to freeze everything._

_“You don’t want to do this? Change it then! Be someone else, Nathaniel; change your own reality!”_

_He stared at her, shock warring with betrayal in his mind, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to disappear, to be nothing at all. His body couldn’t hurt if he didn’t have one; his heart couldn’t ache if there was nothing there._

_“Be someone stronger,” she was saying, somewhere far away. “Be someone else.”_

_He loved her. She was his whole world. He thought he might hate her. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be someone who could hurt like this._

_He didn’t feel the change until he saw the way she was looking at him. Anger had given away to a careful blankness, the closed-off expression that he’d seen too many times but never directed at him, and when she took a step back it seemed involuntary._

_“That’s good, Nathaniel,” she said, and if she wasn’t his mother, he never would have heard the way her voice almost shook. “That’s good; this is what you need to do.”_

_He realized, in a faraway sense, that the dizzying pain of his shoulder had lessened. He looked down, and then wished he hadn’t, because the burn was gone but this wasn’t his skin, this wasn’t his skin and yet he recognized it, and he couldn’t– he didn’t–_

_“Try to hold on to it,” she was saying, and he didn’t mean to obey her and yet his body didn’t change, his hands, too large and too sickeningly familiar, suddenly wrapped around a cleaver and he didn’t want to be this, he didn’t want to be this but his body wasn’t his own anymore–_

_He swung, because that was what this body did, and it was only with the last dregs of a strength he didn’t know he had that he buried the cleaver into his own stomach, the world spinning and breaking apart as he collapsed to the floor and choked up blood from lips that were his own once again._

_He awoke to twin pains in his stomach and shoulder, barely able to yank the IV out of his arm before nausea overtook him. She held his hair back as he puked, carefully positioning him above the toilet so that his burnt skin avoided the porcelain._

_“That was good, Nathaniel,” she said in between his desperate, hacking wretches. “We’ll try again tomorrow, see if you can hold it a little longer.”_

_He closed his eyes and wished he could be nothing again._

 

* * *

 

Nathaniel had a perhaps unhealthy habit of letting the preparations for extractions consume him, although it hardly made him stand out from his colleagues. Time took on a hazy quality as the days approaching a job progressed, skipping and jumping just like the dreams he prepared to enter. The dreamlike quality of the planning was even stronger for this job. Nathaniel half-felt like his time on the rooftop with Andrew was the only time he truly woke up.

The next time they found themselves on the rooftop, Andrew smoking a cigarette and Nathaniel pretending not to be inhaling the secondhand smoke, Nathaniel brought up Aaron. A perverse part of him hoped it would surprise Andrew, that for once Nathaniel would be the one with unexpected information. He tried not to think too hard about why he wanted to provoke Andrew that badly.

There was really no way to bring it up subtly, and he didn’t actually want it to be very subtle, so he waited until Andrew had just lifted the cigarette to his lips before he spoke.

“Why are you still working with Aaron?”

Andrew raised an eyebrow, the cigarette dropping back down as he turned to look at Nathaniel. “What do you mean?”

“Nicky told me about how you found him, about how he was addicted to dreaming. I get that you saved him, but why stick around? And why a career that puts him so close to his weakness?”

“Are you really one to talk about addictions, Nathaniel? We may not have found you hooked up to a PASIV in some basement in Mumbai, but that doesn’t make you any less of a junkie.”

Nathaniel was getting more and more used to Andrew’s evasions, and even better at ignoring them. “My question wasn’t about me; it was about Aaron.”

“Why do you care? I didn’t take you for the type to want to meddle in other people’s family business.”

“I care if your issues with each other are going to interfere with the job.”

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel, are we not modeling healthy familial relationships? Maybe one of should move to another country, since that seems to be so good for resolving family disputes.”

“As long as it’s not Germany, be my guest. Are you going to answer the question, or do I need to ask a third time?”

Andrew gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes, pausing to take a drag from the cigarette still dangling from his fingertips. “My obligations to my brother didn’t end the first time I woke him up. He needs structure and consistent exposure to dreaming without slipping into old habits.”

Andrew paused, offering the cigarette to Nathaniel, but Nathaniel shook his head.

“And, at the end of the day, he’s still a damn good architect.” Andrew smiled sardonically. “He’s had decades of practice, after all.”

Andrew ended the conversation by pointedly going back to smoking and staring at the blurred edge of the horizon, and Nathaniel let him, pointedly not thinking about why he was so intent on knowing the other man.

When Nathaniel wasn’t on the roof, he was practicing. Aaron had him talking through the architectural layouts so often that he could have repeated them in his sleep, and he was starting to see Riko’s face every time he closed his eyes. Andrew had procured hours’ worth of footage of the other man, and Nathaniel played each clip through hundreds of times. Every time he thought he was done, he would notice another tiny gesture, a minuscule twist in Riko’s mouth or the way he always tilted his head to the left when rolling his eyes or the way he stiffened almost imperceptibly when another member of the family was around.

It wasn’t enough time. A few days could never be enough time to become another person, no matter how good Nathaniel was. Usually, he required months of reconnaissance before he even started a forgery, and that was when the stakes in the dream didn’t involve real death. Kevin would realize something was off the moment Nathaniel stepped into the dream, he knew it. And he was pretty sure Andrew knew it too.

“Again,” Andrew snapped after Nathaniel had walked the length of the warehouse for the tenth time. “Widen your gait; he doesn’t walk like that.”

“I _know_ he doesn’t walk like that,” Nathaniel snapped back.

“Then _fix_ it!”

“If you’re such an expert on Riko, why don’t you do it?”

Andrew rolled his eyes in obvious irritation. “I’m not a forger.”

“Then harass your cousin into doing it!”

“He can’t, not well enough to fool Kevin.”

“No one can when you’ve given them less than a week to prepare!”

“Your reputation says otherwise. Were stories of your skills exaggerated?”

Nathaniel knew he shouldn’t let it get to him, but he couldn’t help it; it was like Andrew zeroed in on his weaknesses without even trying and then pressed hard until Nathaniel was on the brink of snapping.

“I know you can do this,” Andrew said when Nathaniel didn’t respond. “You’re not trying hard enough.”

Nathaniel gave up on the walk and stalked forward until he and Andrew were practically nose to nose, Andrew somehow still managing to look down on him despite Nathaniel’s advantage in height.

“I’m giving this everything I’ve got,” Nathaniel snapped.

“You’re not. You’re scared.”

“Scared of trying too hard? I know the stakes; I know what happens if I fail!”

“And yet somehow the idea of eternal limbo is less frightening to you than truly putting yourself into this forgery. Are you that terrified of becoming your father that you won’t even forge someone associated with him?”

Nathaniel stepped back involuntarily, feeling as if he’d been struck. “That’s not what this is about. I’m not scared of a dead man.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“Fuck off.”

Andrew shrugged, turning back to the notebook he had been scribbling in, and Nathaniel retreated to his curtained off “room” to try and perfect Riko’s sneer. Once, for a second, he looked in the mirror and Riko glared back at him, but Nathaniel turned away too quickly for the illusion to hold.

 

* * *

 

When Nathaniel joined Andrew on the rooftop later that evening, they didn’t bring up Riko. Andrew smoked and stared at the horizon, Nathaniel breathed in the fumes and stared at him, and the world below fell into the muted hush of a half-finished dream.

“Do you enjoy it?” Nathaniel asked at last, when thoughts of his father wouldn’t stop encroaching on his mind no matter how hard he fought it.

“Enjoy what?”

“This. Dreaming. All of it.”

Andrew lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I’ve been told I’ve got a knack for it.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

“That word doesn’t hold much meaning for me these days. I don’t dislike dreaming. It serves its purposes. Do you?”

“Do you really need to ask?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You’re the one who called me a junkie. Dreaming is all that I want to do; how could I not enjoy it?”

“There’s a difference between wanting to dream and simply not wanting to wake up.”

“I don’t–” Nathaniel paused, frowning. “Dreams are all I have left. They’re what I’m good at.”

“Then why do you wake up, Nathaniel? If the dreams are all you have left, why not go down deep enough that you lose your mind before you ever have to open your eyes in the real world again?”

“I’m not that eager to lose my mind.”

“Why not? It’s not much different from death, really, and you seem to be hurtling closer towards that every day. Death in a dream might be better.”

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. Hooking himself up to the PASIV in some abandoned motel room, seeing how many layers he could go down until it all disappeared. Maybe it would be peaceful.

“My mother would kill me,” he said at last. “If I ever died.”

The look Andrew shot him bordered on disappointment. Resentment reared up in Nathaniel’s chest, an ugly twist in his throat at the idea that the other man might feel righteous enough to judge him. He wanted, irrationally, to defend himself, and the resentment only deepened when he realized that he couldn’t think of a defense.

“Staying alive because you’re still afraid of disappointing your dead mother?” None of the disappointment leaked through into Andrew’s voice; if anything he sounded bored. “You’re going to have to come up with a better reason than that, Nathaniel, if you want to survive.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that Nathaniel didn’t want to forge Riko. He knew how important it was to the job, knew that failure was as good as death. But it wasn’t as simple as Andrew had implied. A forgery was more than just wanting something; it was more than just a surface level change. People might dye their hair or wear colored contacts, but they were still the same person underneath. Forgery was something else entirely.

Technically, anyone could change their appearance in a dream with a bit of training. Shifting physical features was just a trick of the mind, and it was even easier when there was a model to go off of. But the real trick was shifting everything else. When Nathaniel created a forgery, he became an entirely new person. Movements, mannerisms, small tics that no one would think to look for. Anyone could wear a mask, but Nathaniel was one of the few who could truly become someone new.

It wasn’t teachable, his type of skill. Sometimes clients tried to demand that he share his secret with them, train them to disappear into a new body the same way he did. But the truth was, you couldn’t become someone new like he did unless there was nothing there to replace. A masterpiece required a blank slate.

Nathaniel was used to being nothing. It was what made him so good at his job; it was what kept him alive for all those years spent living in his father’s house and what kept him employable once he had left. But when there was nothing underneath a forgery, there was nothing to stand against all the other dangers of the subconscious.

He stared into the mirror and his father stared back at him.

Nathaniel found Andrew alone in the team’s workspace, so absorbed in his work that he hardly appeared to notice Nathaniel’s arrival beyond the slight tensing of his shoulders.

“I’m not scared.” It wasn’t what Nathaniel had meant to say.

Andrew didn’t look up from the blueprint he had been reviewing. “Are we really doing this again? At least try and sound like you believe that.”

“I’m not,” Nathaniel insisted. “I just– Riko is too similar to him.” Neither of them had to clarify which him Nathaniel was referring to. “And I know him far better than I’ll ever know Riko. I don’t want to slip into him instead.”

Andrew sighed, pushing away from the desk and spinning his chair to face Nathaniel. “You don’t accidentally become your father, Nathaniel.”

“Maybe not when you’re awake, but–”

“Not when you’re dreaming, either,” Andrew interrupted. “Maybe if the dreams were natural. But you’re in control here; you know exactly what’s happening and you know how to change your reality.”

“It’s not always that simple!”

“Do you know why this extraction is going to work?” Andrew snapped.

Nathaniel blinked at the sudden change in topic. “I– I don’t–”

“It’s going to work because our subject is terrified. And a terrified subject isn’t thinking about whether the texture of the floor is just right, or whether the people around him are who they say they are, or whether he’s even awake. All he’s thinking about is survival.”

“He’s right to be terrified. The Moriyama’s could destroy him in an instant if they ever found out he gave away the account password, even subconsciously.”

“Fear without action is paralysis.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“I don’t give a damn if you’re scared of your father. I care about what you do with that fear. And if you’re so terrified of becoming him that you can’t do your job correctly, then you’re doing his job for him. He’ll kill you from the grave.”

Nathaniel glared at him, his jaw clenching automatically. “I survived him for twenty-two years.”

“Survive him a little longer, then.”

 

* * *

 

On the last night before the job, Nathaniel accepted the cigarette when Andrew offered. They smoked in silence for a while, Nathaniel staring up at the night sky and trying and failing to find any constellations he recognized. Somewhere far away, a siren wailed.

This time, Andrew was the first one to break the silence. “What will you do with the money?”

Nathaniel shrugged, passing the cigarette back to Andrew. “I don’t know. Try my best to disappear, I guess. Get a new name, new passport, that sort of thing. Maybe I’ll work some corporate jobs in Europe.”

“Not a very detailed plan, for someone so intent on surviving.”

Nathaniel didn’t respond. He didn’t want to think about it too hard, what would happen after this job. The whole thing had been a kind of dream of its own, hidden away from the rest of the world in the warehouse, surrounded by people he didn’t trust, but at least knew. A part of him didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that the job would ever end.

“What about you?” he asked at last.

“Once I’ve fulfilled this obligation, there won’t be much point in doing anything.” Andrew flicked an ember off of the edge of the roof and they both paused to watch its descent. “Maybe I’ll sleep for a while.”

“You won’t be working any other jobs?”

“Why, do you want to work with me, Nathaniel?”

Andrew had sounded vaguely amused, but the longer the question hung in the air without a response, the more serious it sounded.

Nathaniel hadn’t given it much thought until Andrew said it out loud. It had been so long since he had experienced anything resembling longing that he almost didn’t recognize the feeling that lodged in his chest at the idea.

Nathaniel almost never worked with the same extraction team twice, but, then again, he had never spent this much time with someone on his team outside of strictly planning. He had never worked with someone who wasn’t afraid to bring up his father but also didn’t try to use it against him. He had never been this close to completing a job and left feeling that there would still be unfinished business at the end of it.

“You’re not a bad point man,” Nathaniel said, rather than voicing any of those thoughts. “More competent than some of the others I’ve worked with.”

“Try not to overwhelm me with compliments.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get a big head about it. You’re still a pain to work with.”

“And yet you want to work with me.”

“I don’t know. I feel– I feel awake, when I’m with you.” He was beginning to make a habit of it, voicing things he hadn’t meant to say in front of Andrew.

Andrew barked out a short laugh, sharp and a little pained around the edges. “That says some very dismal things about your waking life, Nathaniel.”

“You should already know that; you’re the one always talking about how much research you’ve done on me.”

“And somehow that research never revealed the full extent of how annoying you are.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to?”

Andrew stared at him for a long moment. Nathaniel felt unmoored, like somewhere over the course of the conversation they had gone off-track. They weren’t talking about a job anymore, but he couldn’t put a name to what he was asking. Maybe he didn’t want to put a name to it.

Andrew lifted a hand, so slowly that he almost didn’t seem to be moving at all, watching Nathaniel the whole time for any sign of trepidation. Nathaniel stayed frozen in place as Andrew pressed his thumb carefully to Nathaniel’s bottom lip. He could feel every ridge of every callous, smell the acrid tinge of nicotine; he thought he might never breathe again.

A second later the hand was gone, Andrew already facing the skyline again and taking a drag from his previously abandoned cigarette. For a moment, Nathaniel thought that was it. He wouldn’t get a better answer from Andrew; he wasn’t even sure what answer he wanted. And then, so softly that Nathaniel almost thought he had dreamed it–

“Ask me when we wake up.”

 

* * *

 

They arrived at the clinic in two separate cars, Nicky and Nathaniel in one and Andrew and Aaron in the other. The waiting room was sparsely occupied, and they were only there for a minute or so before a nurse waved them back, leading them through a series of twisting hallways until a man met them just outside a small glass door.

Dr. Söderburg was an unassuming man, middle-aged with salt and pepper hair cut close to his head and a neatly trimmed beard that hid a weak chin. He reminded Nathaniel vaguely of one of the doctors he had gone to as a child, one of the few times he had needed medical attention for the flu and not an injury he’d had to keep hidden.

“He’s already under,” Dr. Söderburg said to Andrew as soon as the nurse left. “I will be back in twenty minutes; you will be gone by then.”

“Like we were never here,” Andrew assured him, and they entered the room.

Nathaniel had never seen Kevin Day in person. In another life, they might have been raised together under the Moriyama’s, but Nathaniel’s mother’s training had made him a valuable enough tool that he had been permitted to stay in his father’s home to keep learning. Day didn’t look like much; the harsh light of the room washed out his skin and the dark circles under his eyes were impossible to miss. The dark two tattooed into his cheek only served to underscore how pale his skin had become. Exile had not been kind to him.

Nicky flew into action the moment the door closed behind them, flipping open his briefcase to reveal the PASIV and beginning to unravel the IV cords. Andrew and Aaron began to drag the empty stretchers on the edges of the room to Kevin’s side, arranging them in a circle around him so that they could all be connected. Nathaniel took the stretcher to Kevin’s right, rolling up his sleeve and holding out his arm for Nicky to slip the small needle under his skin.

“You’ll have just under six hours on the first level,” Nicky told them as Andrew and Aaron reclined on their own stretchers. “I’ll start playing the music one minute before the kick; that will give you twenty minutes to wrap things up. If everything goes according to plan, that will be right after you’ve cracked the safe.”

Aaron, the dreamer for the first level, pulled on the pair of headphones and lay back, flashing Nicky a brief thumbs up. “Just don’t play Ariana Grande again or I’ll shoot you in the real world.”

“Speaking of shooting,” Andrew said, “I assume you all remember the side effects of this sedative. If you die in the dream, you go straight to limbo. We’re on a tight enough schedule as it is; no one will come after you.”

“You always give the best pep talks,” Nicky told him.

He flipped a switch on the PASIV, the machine whirring to life and the sedative flowing into their veins. Nathaniel felt the effects after only a second, his eyes already beginning to droop as his head fell back against the stretcher. He caught one last glimpse of Andrew, lying back and staring straight at him, mouth half open as if he were about to say something.

The world went black.

 

* * *

 

**Seven Years Before**

_Nathaniel was fifteen when his world ended._

_His father had a private driver, but his mother always preferred to drive herself._

_“It’s an important skill, driving a car,” she had told Nathaniel once. “You never really forget it, but it’s important to keep yourself in practice. Always better to have a way to leave.”_

_She had promised to start teaching him, soon. He’d be eligible to get his permit in just a few months, and after that, they could take as many long drives as they wanted, no need to come up with an errand or a meeting as an excuse. Maybe, he had let himself think, they would start driving and never stop. Maybe they could drive forever._

_He wasn’t quite sure where they were going this time. She had mentioned something about an errand, and Nathaniel, eager for any excuse to get out of the house, had jumped at the chance to join her. His father was out for the day, some secretive meeting in West Virginia that Nathaniel wasn’t supposed to know about, but his presence still weighed the house down with the heavy sense of being watched and judged._

_His mother drummed her fingers against the steering wheel as they drove, one of her slightly more agitated patterns but nothing to cause concern. There was still a chill in the air from the last remnants of winter, but the sun shone blindingly in the sky, so she had put on a pair of sunglasses that gave her face new angles and shadows._

_“You should pay attention,” she told him as they turned onto one of the main roads. “You’ll need to know the roads on your own soon enough, it doesn’t pay to–”_

_The car came out of nowhere. That’s what he would tell the police, later, and his father after that. One second his mother was telling him to pay attention and the next second the world exploded, a cacophony of screeching and metal against metal and everything shattering into a million broken pieces._

_The driver’s side took the brunt of the impact, the sheer force of the hit flipping the car over into a horrible, crunching roll. Nathaniel’s head collided with the window and the world flashed in and out of darkness, his stomach heaving in protest as his body was thrown against the seatbelt. The world didn’t stop moving when the car did, and at first, all Nathaniel could feel was something crushing the air from his lungs and a blinding pain in his forehead._

_The ringing in his ears drowned everything else out. His eyes were open, but it took ages before he could see anything, so disoriented that it took even longer to realize that he was upside down, only the seatbelt keeping him suspended above what had once been the roof of the car._

_There wasn’t enough air in his lungs. He tried to breathe, gasping and gagging on the noxious gas fumes that were already starting to fill the enclosed space, but the seatbelt kept his chest from expanding and the more panicked his breathing became, the less air he was able to drag in. Something sticky dripped down his forehead and landed on the crushed metal below him in dark red splotches._

_The steadily increasing wail of sirens started to overtake the shrill whine in his ears. Nathaniel tried to move, to yank against the seatbelt and finally get some of the oxygen he so desperately needed, and it was only when he turned his head to the side that he caught the first glimpse of his mother._

_It was the sunglasses, he thought at first. The sunglasses that cast half her face into shadow and gave it new planes and angles; that was why he didn’t recognize the face dangling beside him. It was the sunglasses and the crimson blood coating her face and the jagged bits of broken glass that turned her into something else, because this had to be something else; it wasn’t his mother, he wasn’t seeing his mother–_

_Nathaniel’s head spun and there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world to set it right. He couldn’t look at the face that wasn’t his mother’s, so his gaze slid lower to the arm that dangled by his shoulder. The body that wasn’t his mother’s wore her watch. The same familiar leather band, the platinum metal with a tiny ring of gold, the slightly tarnished buckle. A single jagged crack ran through the glass surface, but it wasn’t enough to obscure the face._

_10:03, with the second hand just a quarter of the way around its circuit_

_Nathaniel closed his eyes, but he never woke up._

 

* * *

 

 “…told her the insurance would not cover it. Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel’s body jolted slightly, his hand tightening around the wine glass in his hand as the world came into focus. He was seated in Kevin Day’s dining room, halfway through a meal with the man in question seated across from him. He had reviewed the blueprints a hundred times, but it still hadn’t prepared him for the room’s actual appearance. Most of the décor looked like it had come straight from the 1800s, the low lighting and dark red walls reminding him eerily of his father’s home in Baltimore.

“My apologies,” he said quickly, blinking away the disorientation that always came with being dropped in the middle of another life. “I was distracted.”

“Forgivable, given the circumstances. My condolences, about your father.”

Kevin looked better in the dream, less sickly and clearly more comfortable in his home territory. The number two still stood out against his cheek, but the dark circles under his eyes had lessened and he didn’t look nearly as thin. Apparently, Kevin Day had a distorted idea of his own health when he was unconscious.

Nathaniel smiled tightly, raising the glass in an almost toast and downing half the wine in a single gulp. “It was not entirely unexpected. He was very sick.”

“Still. It is never easy to lose a parent, especially when he leaves you with so many responsibilities.” Kevin’s right hand held his fork but the left lay on the table, the awkward bend of the fingers visible even from here.

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Clearly, if the Moriyama’s are already sending you out to do their bidding. I assume this visit is not entirely social in nature?”

“There are some matters we need to discuss,” Nathaniel agreed. “But we don’t have to–”

He was cut off by a sudden sharp ringing. Nathaniel had been expecting it, but he couldn’t help but jump along with Kevin as the other man’s hand flew down to grab his phone from his pocket.

“Is something wrong?” Nathaniel asked.

Kevin stared down at the phone, his brow furrowed. “I do not recognize the number.”

He wouldn’t, not at first, but over the course of the two levels, the number would repeat over and over again: 301-5200. When they returned to this level, the code would open the safe with Kevin’s secrets. If something went wrong and he wasn’t able to open it, Nathaniel or someone else on the team would still be able to break in.

“Please, take the call; I won’t be offended. It might be something important.”

Kevin nodded, pushing his chair away from the table and still frowning down at the phone. “I will only be a moment.”

He disappeared into the hall behind the dining room, bringing the phone to his ear and dropping his voice into a low murmur. The moment he was out of sight, Nathaniel withdrew the single white tablet from his pocket and dropped it into Kevin’s wine glass, watching the pill fizz for a brief moment and then dissolve as if it had never been there. The sedative was fast-acting but temporary; it would keep Kevin under just long enough for them to hook him up to the PASIV and start the use of the real sedatives.

Kevin reappeared a moment later, tucking the phone back into his pocket and taking his seat once again.

“Who was it?” Nathaniel asked, not bothering to hide the curiosity in his voice.

He didn’t actually know what call Andrew had arranged as a diversion, and Nathaniel Wesninski would want to have as much information as possible about Kevin Day’s business dealings.

“Everything has been dealt with,” Kevin evaded smoothly. “I apologize again for the interruption.”

“No apologies necessary, of course. Business comes first.” Nathaniel raised his glass, trying on the shark’s smile his father always brought out around acquaintances who weren’t quite his enemies. “To the Moriyama’s. May our beloved patrons’ business remain fruitful and enduring.”

Kevin raised his own glass a second later, tapping it almost reluctantly against Nathaniel’s and then gulping the wine down as quickly as possible. Nathaniel had heard rumors that the Moriyama’s wayward pet was a bit too fond of alcohol; he couldn’t tell if the rumors were true or if it was Nathaniel’s company that drove Kevin to drink. Maybe a little bit of both.

“Speaking of our beloved patrons.” Kevin leaned back in his chair, his gaze roaming over Nathaniel meticulously. “What matter was so urgent that they felt the need to send you all the way to South Carolina? My phone number has not changed, you know.”

“Surely such conversation can wait until after dinner.”

Kevin’s eyes narrowed, but his look of suspicion was ruined when he blinked heavily and began to yawn. “I did not take you for the type to draw things out.”

“Maybe I’m just hungry.”

“Maybe you–” Kevin was cut off by another long yawn, his body already beginning to slump in his chair. His frown deepened, what might have been panic dulled into a mild concern by the sedative. “I don’t– did you–”

“Are you alright?” Nathaniel asked, standing quickly and forcing a look of concern onto his face as he began to move towards Kevin. “You look horrible.”

Kevin opened his mouth to respond, but his eyes were already rolling back in his head, his body sagging fully against the chair as whatever words he might have said turned into a heavy sigh. Nathaniel waited a minute to make sure he was fully out, slapping his face lightly a few times just to be sure, and then hurried out of the dining room.

Aaron and Andrew were already waiting for him just outside the front door, leaning on opposite sides of the porch like mirror images. They moved back to the dining room silently, Nathaniel and Andrew struggling to lift Kevin while Aaron went ahead of them to the bathroom he had designed just down the hallway.

They moved slower than Nathaniel had expected, Kevin a surprisingly heavy weight between them despite how thin he had looked in the real world, but reached the bathroom without incident. Aaron had already dragged three chairs to lean against the tub, which was steadily filling with water. Nathaniel dumped Kevin into the first chair and took the seat beside him, with Andrew on Kevin’s other side.

“You’ll have four hours down there,” Aaron reminded them as he began to set up the PASIV, sliding the IV needle into Kevin’s arm first and passing Andrew and Nathaniel their own cords. “When you hear the music, you’ll have twenty minutes left. Make sure you’re away from Kevin by that point.”

Andrew pulled the headphones over his ears, glancing at Nathaniel out of the corner of his eye. “Ready, Wesninski?”

“Doesn’t matter if I’m not at this point.”

“Don’t fuck it up,” Aaron told them, and with those comforting words, he flipped the switch of the PASIV, sending them spiraling down even further into the depths of the dream.

 

* * *

 

Nathaniel turned off the faucet, staring down at his dripping hands and pushing away the lingering feeling of nausea from going under so quickly. The sink was white marble, all elegant curves and shining surfaces, and when he looked up, the bathroom wasn’t much different. It felt like the kind of bathroom that had a waiting room or an attendant, the kind where you went to wash your hands or take a break but nothing else.

Andrew leaned against the stall opposite him, looking surprisingly older in a well-tailored suit that somehow seemed to lend him a few inches. Nathaniel wore a suit, too, but this was one of the heavy, dark fabrics that Riko Moriyama preferred.

“You should change quickly,” Andrew told him. “Kevin will get anxious if he goes too long without his master, and who knows when his projections will feel the need to piss.”

Nathaniel nodded, turning to face the mirror and frowning at his reflection. He could feel Riko Moriyama just on the edge of his conscious, all of the tiny gestures and mannerisms he had spent hours memorizing, but his face remained the same.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got stage fright.”

“I’m fine,” Nathaniel snapped, but it was still definitively his own voice that spoke.

“You won’t be fine if you don’t pull off this forgery. I’ll shoot you myself.”

Nathaniel was vaguely surprised to realize that he didn’t actually believe the other man. That didn’t make him any safer; if Andrew didn’t shoot him, Kevin Day certainly would. But even the certainty of that danger didn’t tug Riko Moriyama any closer into the forefront of his mind.

 He glared at his reflection, and for a moment it seemed to flicker, gray eyes going a bit sharper, streaks of white flashing in his hair, a sneer beginning to form–

Nathaniel stumbled back, and he was himself again.

Andrew pushed away from the stall, stalking forward and grabbing Nathaniel by the chin. His fingers dug in so tightly Nathaniel thought they might bruise, dragging Nathaniel’s face forward until there were only a few inches between them.

“I thought you had this handled.”

“I do have it handled,” Nathaniel said, but even he could hear the falseness that rang out in the words.

“That’s not what it looks like.”

“I just need a minute to get my bearings; that’s all.”

“Your father is dead.”

“I know he is; this isn’t–”

“Do you know, Nathaniel? Can you look me in the eyes and tell me with absolute certainty that Nathan Wesninski is dead?”

Andrew’s grip tightened on his chin, forcing Nathaniel to remain facing him, but Nathaniel looked away, glaring at the gleaming tile just over Andrew’s shoulder.

“I know he’s dead,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.”

“You outlived him, Nathaniel. You survived, you made it through, and soon he’ll be rotting in his coffin and you’ll still be here, alive.”

“He was cremated, actually.” The joke sounded hollow even as he said it.

Andrew ignored it. “You’re not standing here by chance. You’re alive, and he’s dead, and you made that happen. You may not have killed him, but you didn’t let him kill you. Don’t finish what he failed to do.”

Nathaniel finally met Andrew’s eyes. “He’s too close. It’s too easy, becoming him. Effortless.”

“You think this is effortless? You think torturing yourself like this means you’re becoming him? We construct our own selves, Nathaniel. As long as you’re fighting this hard, you will never become him. He wouldn’t be fighting it at all.”

Andrew finally released Nathaniel, taking a step back. “Become Riko Moriyama for a few hours. I know who you’ll be when you wake up.”

Nathaniel nodded, closing his eyes. Riko Moriyama was waiting for him, standing side by side with another presence that never seemed to leave the edges of his mind. He ignored it, reaching forward, closing his hand around the person he was about to become and letting it slide over his body like a second skin.

Riko opened his eyes and rolled his neck, cracking his shoulders and trying out a derisive sneer on Andrew that came all too easily. “Let’s get this done.”

 

* * *

 

The banquet was in full swing by the time they left the bathroom, various well-dressed projections roaming around the room, murmuring quietly to themselves and shooting Andrew and Riko the occasional suspicious glance. Kevin stood alone on the outskirts, impeccably dressed and yet still looking a little ragged, his hands clenched behind his back and a nervous tic already making itself apparent on his jaw.

He looked up the moment Riko began to move toward him, his back straightening even further and his whole body tensing. Riko was at his side in moments, barely sparing him a glance before turning to survey the rest of the room.

“You look like shit,” Riko said casually, watching a projection near the front of the room gulping from a silver flask. “Try to at least look like you belong here.”

“I apologize,” Kevin said quietly.

“Don’t apologize; do better.” Riko glanced around for a waiter, scowling when his search came up empty. “What do I have to do to get a goddamn drink around here?”

“Do you want me to get you a–”

“I don’t want you to look any more like the waitstaff then you already do,” Riko snapped.

“Of course. There’s a bar over there if you–”

“I do have eyes, Kevin.”

Riko started forward, not bothering to look behind him to see if Kevin was following. Most of the projections shrunk back at his approach, clearing a path quickly to the bar on the other side of the room. Did Kevin notice how terrified all of his subconscious guests were of his master, or was he too wrapped up in his own fear to pay attention?

Riko rattled his drink order off quickly, one of the hundreds of tidbits of information he had spent hours memorizing, and Kevin mumbled his order after him. The moment the bartender lay three shots on the table, Kevin downed two of them. No wonder Andrew had felt so confident Kevin wouldn’t realizing something was off; he was clearly too terrified to think about anything beyond making it through the night.

As if on cue, Andrew appeared in front of them, still looking as calm and cool as he had in the bathroom.

“Riko Moriyama.”

Kevin shifted to place his body in between Riko and Andrew, but Riko pushed his shoulder away without looking away from Andrew.

“Do I know you?” Riko asked, bored and disdainful and not yet drunk enough to pretend otherwise.

“No, but I know you.”

“You’re a member of the majority, then. Is there a reason you’re interrupting my drink?”

“I have something I wanted to discuss with you.”

“And I have a drink I want to finish.” Riko turned away, interest already lost, but Andrew was undeterred.

“I really think you’d be interested in what I have to say. It turns out we have an incredible number of mutual friends, particularly in the Cayman Islands.”

Riko said nothing, but he felt Kevin tense beside him.

“Or maybe I should be asking your associate. After all, Day is the one with all the investments, correct?”

 Riko finally turned back to Andrew, looking at him more closely. He looked relatively relaxed, one hand around one of the champagne glasses being circulated around the room and the other tucked in his pocket, staring back at Riko with an easy confidence. He had reason to be confident; after all, he knew exactly how this would play out.

“Perhaps we should take this discussion somewhere more private,” Riko said.

Andrew flashed him a grin that was all teeth. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

Riko led them out of the banquet hall and into one of the small side halls, pausing outside room 300 and gesturing for Andrew to enter first. The room itself was relatively small, probably used as a conference room when large events weren’t being held, dominated by a large oak table surrounded by sturdy chairs. A numbered plaque graced each chair, and Andrew immediately went to lounge in seat 15. Riko sat directly across from him in seat 20.

“You clearly think you’re in a position to make demands,” Riko said as soon as Kevin had shut the door and joined them at the table. “I see no reason to drag this out. You can attempt to blackmail me, I’ll explain exactly how I’ll have your life destroyed, and we can get back to the party in no time.”

“And where does Kevin Day feature in all this?” Andrew asked.

“Day is irrelevant.”

“You’d certainly like the world to believe that, wouldn’t you?”

“Get to the point,” Riko growled.

“It’s relatively simple. Day has access to several accounts that are of great interest to me. I’d like the password.”

“And is he going to give you the passwords before or after I have him shoot you?”

“I wouldn’t be so hasty. You really think I’d make a request like this without insurance? You wouldn’t believe the things Nathan Wesninski left behind when he passed.”

For one, shattering moment, Nathaniel froze. Andrew had given no indication of how exactly he would press Riko in the private meeting. He’d only said that he would catch Kevin off guard, make sure he was frightened enough that the passwords would be the only thing on his mind. The Wesninski name was never supposed to come into this.

If the forgery slipped, Kevin was too busy pulling out a gun to see it, aiming it directly at Andrew’s head with an unwavering accuracy. “And what will you leave behind?”

“Stop!” Riko snapped, barely able to keep the panic from bleeding through at the sight of a gun pointed at Andrew. “Don’t shoot him, you fucking idiot.”

Kevin glanced between Riko and Andrew, eyes wide. “But he–”

“So we deal with it discretely, not by splattering brains in a rented venue.”

Andrew smiled back at Kevin coolly, still looking completely relaxed as he lounged in his chair. “Be a good dog and listen to your master, Day.”

“You’re not important enough for his bullet yet,” Riko told Andrew. “You’ve given me no evidence that this is actually worth my time, just made vague threats and tried to act like you have any idea what you’re getting into.”

Andrew cocked his head to the side. “Would you like me to make more specific threats? Because I could make a phone call…”

“What you can do is get the fuck out of here and hope I never see you again.”

“I understand it’s a lot to take in.” Andrew withdrew a business card and slid it across the table to Kevin, a familiar phone number engraved on the surface. “Get in touch once you’ve made your decision.”

Andrew left the room without bothering to wait for a response, and as Riko watched him go he heard the first faint notes of a violin begin to drift through the air. Kevin didn’t seem to notice the music, either dismissing it as sounds from the banquet or too wrapped up in the new problem Andrew had presented to think about anything else.

“At least try to look like you have a spine,” Riko snapped.

Kevin jumped slightly, immediately returning his full attention to Riko. “Is he going to be a problem?”

“Are you this terrified every time someone tries to threaten you?”

‘It’s just– The Wesninski information–”

“Nathan Wesninski is dead,” Riko interrupted. “Some desperate attempt at blackmail won’t bring him back to life.”

“But what about the son? He must have access to the information too.”

Riko gritted his teeth. If Kevin woke up with a vendetta against Nathaniel Wesninski, he was going to kill Andrew himself.

“Give me the card,” Riko said, choosing to ignore the specter of Nathaniel.

Kevin obediently passed the business card Andrew had left to Riko. Riko stuffed it into his pocket and stood abruptly, Kevin stumbling to his feet a moment later.

“Make some calls,” Riko snapped, already heading towards the door. “Find out who he is, whether he’s spewing complete bullshit or if we actually need to expend energy on this.”

“But I don’t–”

“Figure it out!” Riko called behind him, and the door slammed shut on Kevin’s protests.

Andrew was already back in the bathroom waiting for him, smoking a cigarette and drumming his fingers on the sink to the rhythm of the music that was steadily increasing in volume.

“What the fuck was that?” Nathaniel demanded, his reflection in the mirror finally back to normal.

“That was the plan, Nathaniel.”

“You never said you were going to bring up my father!”

“I wasn’t aware that you were the one in charge here.”

The same, choking rage that Nathaniel had felt when Andrew had stolen his watch began to rise in his throat. “I should shoot you right now.”

“And if you did, Nathaniel? What do you think you would wake up to?”

Probably Aaron or Nicky’s gun in his face, if they didn’t immediately shoot him on the first level when Andrew failed to wake up.

“You should have warned me,” Nathaniel said at last.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything. If Kevin’s going to wake up suspicious of you, your presence on the first level would be enough. But he’s not going to wake up suspicious of anything, because when Kevin Day wakes up from his experimental surgery in Germany, all he’s going to remember is the doctor hooking him up to the anesthesia and telling him to count down from ten.”

“Subconsciously–”

“It won’t matter either way. You’ll be long gone with your hard earned money, right?”

Nathaniel stared at him for a long moment. The anger was beginning to fade, but the ache it left behind was almost worse. “You can’t ask me to trust you and then pull shit like this.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Nathaniel,” Andrew said as the music around them reached a crescendo. “I never asked you to trust me.”

 

* * *

 

**Three Years Before**

_Nathaniel was nineteen when he stood in his father’s house for the last time. He’d been in his father’s study enough times that its interior was no longer some coveted mystery to him, but the thrill of the forbidden still ran down his spine every time he set foot inside, subconsciously tensing against the inevitable punishment for going where young boys weren’t meant to go._

_The room was perpetually dark, heavy curtains blocking out any natural lighting the windows might have brought in and dim lamps positioned just far enough apart that part of the room was always in shadow. His father’s desk dominated the space, a giant oak monstrosity that gleamed almost red in the low lighting, meticulously neat in comparison to the clutter of the rest of the room._

_His father loomed in the dark leather chair behind the desk, as permanent a fixture as any other piece of furniture in the room. The study was his favored place to deal out judgment that didn’t involve a meat cleaver._

_“What would your mother say?” his father asked at last._

_“Mom always loved Germany. She said she wanted to take me there someday.”_

_“Was that before or after those bastards put her in the ground?”_

_Nathaniel clenched his jaw, refusing to meet his father’s eyes with anything that might be construed as a challenge. “I helped you destroy them.”_

_“You’re not the one who killed them, though.”_

_“I’m the reason you found every last one of them. We both know that’s the only reason I stayed this long.”_

_“So you’ll run away to Europe to dream your life away, is that it?”_

_“My dreams are what caught them!”_

_“The dreams are a parlor trick!” his father snapped, and Nathaniel’s every muscle tensed in preparation to flee._

_“You let her train me,” he said, fighting to keep his voice low and steady. “She made me into this.”_

_“I let her train you when I thought you might someday be a useful tool for the Moriyama’s.”_

_“You’re the one who didn’t send me to them.”_

_“Because I wanted to raise an heir!”_

_Nathaniel finally lifted his gaze, meeting his father’s eyes and rhythmically clenching and unclenching his fist at his side to resist the urge to run. “Staying in Baltimore won’t change anything. I still won’t be what you want.”_

_“I wanted a son,” Nathan spat. “What I got was a disappointment.”_

_“Then it doesn’t matter, does it? Send the disappointment away to Germany; hope the rest of the world forgets I was ever here.”_

_Nathaniel had learned the exact contours of his father’s face long ago, knew what every minute twitch of his mouth or brow meant. It was why his first true forgery had been so perfect; there was no person on Earth he had studied more than his father. Right now, the twitch in Nathan’s jaw and the slight lowering of his eyebrows spelled the beginnings of death._

_“You forget your place.”_

_“I don’t have a place here. You made that clear.”_

_Nathaniel watched his father’s hand twitch toward the drawer that concealed his favored gun and felt nothing. Maybe he had spent so long being afraid of his father there was no more fear to give for death. Maybe dying would be like falling asleep._

_But then Nathan glanced behind him, so quickly that Nathaniel might have missed it if he weren’t so attuned to his father’s every move, to the ancient safe that had been built into the wall along with the house. The safe whose contents were the only thing keeping Nathan Wesninski alive. The safe whose password was the only thing keeping Nathaniel alive. If he died, he would take his father’s insurance with him._

_“I won’t forget myself,” Nathaniel said. “I won’t embarrass you while I’m there. I’ll work jobs and I’ll disappear.”_

_“If you go to Germany, you will never set foot in this house again as long as I’m alive.”_

_It was as close to a blessing as Nathaniel would ever receive. Banishment was better than death, was better even than staying here and becoming the heir his father so badly wanted._

_“I understand,” Nathaniel said._

_“You will, one day.”_

_His father had never been one to waste words on goodbyes and Nathaniel had survived him long enough to know when he was dismissed._

_Nathaniel didn’t truly breathe until the door of the study closed behind him. The first breath brought a sudden wave of tremors, his whole body beginning to shake as the reality of his situation swept over him. He was leaving his father’s house. He was going to Germany. He was alive, and as the sense of his own life returned to him, the fear returned with it._

 

* * *

 

Nathaniel woke up choking on bath water, kicking out frantically and slamming the back of his head against the porcelain rim of the tub. The world spun around him, and for a second he was so disoriented he thought he was back in the house in Baltimore. Even the bathroom décor looked the same.

“Calm down,” Aaron snapped, already helping Andrew out of the tub. “We have to move fast; the dream will start collapsing now that Andrew’s awake and we need to be ready when Day wakes up.”

Nathaniel forced his body to still, dragging air into his lungs with a shuddering breath and waiting until the colors bursting behind his closed eyelids began to fade. As soon as he was sure he could stand up without collapsing, he clambered out of the bathtub, careful not to knock over Kevin’s precariously positioned chair that still leaned suspended over the water.

“Do you know what you have to do?” Aaron asked, pulling on a ski mask and passing a second one to Andrew.

“Obviously,” Nathaniel snapped back.

He closed his eyes for a second, shifted his reality just the tiniest bit, and then he was dry again, panicked and wide-eyed and ready to wake Kevin up.

Andrew and Aaron disappeared out the door, leaving Nathaniel alone with his charge. Kevin’s face was tensed in sleep, eyes darting around frantically behind closed eyelids and brow deeply furrowed. The sedative was strong enough to keep him from twitching, but it was clear whatever was going on in the dream was panicking him.

Nathaniel unhooked him from the PASIV, stowing the briefcase in one of the locked cabinets Aaron had dreamt up under the sink, and then shoved Kevin back as hard as he could. The chair teetered for a moment, caught between gravity and Kevin’s weight, and then went crashing down, plunging Kevin into the tub.

Kevin’s eyes flew open the moment he hit the water, his whole body lashing out in a frantic spasm. Nathaniel reached out to pull him from the tub and Kevin’s hand closed around his wrist, yanking him forward and sending Nathaniel stumbling against the edge. A moment later Kevin rolled over the rim of the tub, slamming into Nathaniel and sending them both tumbling to the ground.

“Wait!” Nathaniel shouted, but Kevin’s hands were already tightening against his throat, lifting him up and smashing his head against the tiled floor.

Black spots burst in Nathaniel’s vision, the world spinning around him as he kicked out frantically against Kevin’s body weight. Kevin’s grip only tightened, forcing Nathaniel’s head back and exposing his throat. For a blinding moment, he was suspended in the air, surrounded by the scorching fumes of burning gas with the wail of sirens echoing in his ears.

“Don’t–” Nathaniel rasped out, but he could barely draw air into his lungs.

“What the fuck is going on?” Kevin demanded, eyes wild.

Nathaniel slammed his fist against the floor, bucking against Kevin’s body, but the other man ignored his struggles.

“Who sent you? What do you want?”

“Mori– Moriyama’s–”

“They wouldn’t send you to kill me!” Even as he said it, Kevin didn’t look like he believed it.

“Not– not trying to kill you–”

Kevin finally released his grip on Nathaniel’s throat, keeping Nathaniel pinned with his body. Nathaniel gulped down air in frantic gasps, his lungs finally beginning to expand again as the black spots faded from his vision. The gasps turned into hacking coughs, his body still not quite recovered from the sudden awakening, until finally he slumped against the floor and began to breathe normally again.

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t kill you right now,” Kevin demanded.

“I didn’t do this to you,” Nathaniel said as calmly as he could manage. “I was trying to help you.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“You passed out at dinner. I tried to wake you up, but nothing was working; the bathtub was a last resort.”

“That’s bullshit,” Kevin growled. His hands were shaking.

“If the Moriyama’s sent me to kill you I’d do it while your eyes were open. I’m not a coward.”

Kevin closed his eyes for a second, his chest still heaving from the initial panic and struggle. “Why did the Moriyama’s send you here?”

“Not to kill you; I don’t–”

“Why did they send you here?” Kevin repeated. “Was it about your father? About the insurance?”

Nathaniel’s flinch was involuntary. There was no way Kevin’s mind had jumped there naturally. If he was still thinking about the insurance, what else did he remember from the dream?

“This has nothing to do with my father.”

“It has everything to do with your father! What are you without him?”

“I’m not him,” Nathaniel insisted. “I’m not their butcher!”

“His secrets are the only thing still keeping you alive. You think that just because they sent me away, I don’t know what’s going on? The only value you have is the password to your father’s safe.”

“Killing me won’t change that. I told someone else the code the moment he died; my death would destroy the Moriyama’s.”

It was a lie. There was no one he trusted enough to give the code, no one with whom he was close enough to even consider it. Giving another person those six little numbers would be like handing them his life to destroy.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Kevin said, and his hands were suddenly back around Nathaniel’s neck. “I’m going to make you talk.”

Panic flooded Nathaniel’s brain with a dull roar at the thought of losing any more air, his whole body jerking and thrashing beneath Kevin’s.

“You don’t have to believe me! You don’t have to believe me, but someone did this to you! They did this to you and knocking you out couldn’t have been their end goal! We have to deal with that first!”

The screech of tires outside sounded like his salvation. A car door closed with a muffled thump, and Kevin’s eyes darted towards the open bathroom door.

“Maybe they didn’t plan on me being here,” Nathaniel said quickly, residual panic and relief turning the words into a frantic jumble. “They’ll think you’re still unconscious; they won’t be prepared. Is there a safe place in the house?”

 The office, upstairs, where a reinforced safe sat waiting for Kevin to open it.

“There’s a gun stored in the dining room,” Kevin said, already scrambling to his feet and towards the door. “Stay here.”

“Wait!” Nathaniel forced himself up and after him, his body still aching from Kevin’s tackle. “You don’t know what you’re up against; we should go somewhere secure!”

Kevin glanced back at Nathaniel with a sneer, eerily reminiscent of the sneer Nathaniel had worn as Riko. “I’m not hiding in my own house.”

He stalked back towards the dining room, leaving Nathaniel with no choice but to follow. As Kevin began to rummage through a cabinet that had looked like it was meant for fine china, Nathaniel imagined the solid weight of his preferred handgun in the holster on his shin that hadn’t been there before. By the time Kevin turned back around with his own prize, the dreamt-up gun was already in Nathaniel’s hands.

Kevin paused, raising his eyes at the weapon.

“I’m not stupid,” Nathaniel said, keeping the safety on just in case. “I don’t trust you enough to come here unarmed.”

Whatever Kevin might have been about to say was interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and hurried footsteps.

“We should go somewhere safe,” Nathaniel said in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the remnants of the original plan. “You have no idea how many of them there are; stop to regroup and at least give yourself a fighting chance!”

“You can hide if you want,” Kevin said dismissively, already moving towards the front hall.

Both parties had given up on all attempts at secrecy. Kevin burst into the hall with his gun up and at the ready, Nathaniel a step behind him, already shouting for the intruders to put their hands up.

For a second, all four of them formed a frozen tableau. Andrew and Aaron were nearly unrecognizable in their dark suits and ski masks, each with a gun at the ready, sights already trained on Kevin.

“Who the fuck are you?” Kevin demanded, seemingly picking a twin at random and aiming his gun at his head.

“Do you think you’re in a position to ask questions just because you’re armed?” It was Andrew, the derision clear in his voice. “How well do you shoot right-handed, Day?”

“Do you want to find out?”

“Pull the trigger,” Aaron growled. “I dare you.”

Kevin’s eyes darted to Nathaniel, and a second later Nathaniel realized that he was supposed to be on Kevin’s side. He jerked his gun up towards Aaron’s head, the safety still on.

“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be,” Andrew said. Nathaniel couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or Kevin. “Nobody has to get hurt tonight.”

“Keep your hands where I can see them!” Kevin barked.

“What difference does it make if you can see them?” Andrew snapped. “There’s a gun in my hand either way!”

“Let’s just calm down for a second,” Nathaniel said. “Kevin, we don’t even know why they’re here.”

“They’ve got guns and ski masks, Nathaniel! They’re not here on a fucking social visit!”

“That doesn’t mean we’re here to kill anyone,” Aaron said, drawing Kevin’s attention back towards him. “All we need is information.”

“We can negotiate,” Nathaniel said quickly. “Work something out, no one has to die–”

The words died in his mouth as Kevin turned suddenly, swinging the muzzle from Andrew’s head to Nathaniel’s.

“I’m not a fucking idiot,” Kevin growled. His hands were still shaking. “You were never here on behalf of the Moriyama’s.”

Nathaniel had a moment to panic, to wonder how long it would take him to lose his mind in the unstructured subconscious, and then the bang of the gunshot rang out.

Nathaniel flinched back, but it was Kevin who fell, clutching his arm and staring down at it as if he couldn’t quite understand what was happening. His gun clattered to the floor as he fell and Andrew was there a second later, kicking it away and aiming his still smoking gun at Kevin’s head.

Kevin jerked his head from the wound that was already beginning to seep blood to Andrew’s masked face, eyes wide with something more than pain. “What the fuck?”

“What are you doing?” Nathaniel demanded. “Don’t fucking kill him!”

“He’s survived getting his arm fucked up once; I’m sure he can manage it again,” Andrew snapped, not looking away from where his gun remained trained on Kevin’s head.

“I’m going to kill you,” Kevin told Nathaniel, voice almost eerily calm.

“Aaron, take Nathaniel and open the safe,” Andrew commanded.

Aaron tried to grab Nathaniel’s arm but he shook him off, still staring at Kevin. “This wasn’t part of the plan; he wasn’t– you weren’t supposed to–”

“We don’t have time for this,” Aaron said, pulling Nathaniel a few steps back. “Finish the job and let’s get out of here!”

They didn’t have time. Time before the kick woke them up, or time before Kevin finally began to realize how surreal everything was and the dream started to collapse with them trapped inside?

“The plan will still work,” Andrew said. Nathaniel couldn’t tell if he was talking to him or Aaron. “You know what you have to do.”

“Don’t– you can’t let him die,” Nathaniel told him. “You have to stop the bleeding, keep him alive until–”

“No one is going to die today,” Andrew said, and Nathaniel heard, just below those words, _no one is going to die because of you_.

He stood there for just a second longer, staring at Kevin on the ground and Andrew standing above him, something off about the entire picture, something just at the edge of his subconscious–

“Go!” Andrew shouted, and Nathaniel went.

 

* * *

 

He wasn’t sure when, exactly, he knew. Maybe as he ran after Aaron through the maze of a house the other man had created, through doorways that shouldn’t exist and hallways that looped into each other and impossible stairways, Kevin’s face as the bullet hit his body burned into Nathaniel’s retinas. The expression, not pain or fear or anger, but something deeper. Something like betrayal. Something that made Nathaniel flick off the safety of his gun as he ran.

Maybe he knew when they finally reached the office, Aaron yanking the door open and shoving Nathaniel in ahead of him.

“Get to the safe,” Aaron commanded, positioning himself in the open doorway with his gun at the ready. “You know the password; if the lower level worked Day will already have filled it with what we’re after.”

Nathaniel didn’t even have to look for it. It was a bone-deep memory, moving through the shifting shadows of the room, past the giant oak desk, pressing his palm against the cool metal of the safe embedded in the wall. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, time slowing to a crawl as if his body was just beginning to realize it was in a dream.

A thump sounded from downstairs. Andrew, done securing Kevin and coming to join them. Or Kevin. Come to do what, exactly? What did an exiled extractor do in an office like this?

“What’s the problem?” Aaron demanded when Nathaniel did nothing. “Do you remember the password or not?”

He did. They had made sure he’d know it, making him recite it again and again until the numbers were carved so deeply in his brain that there’d be no chance of forgetting. A precaution, Andrew had said, in case one of them had to open the safe instead of Kevin. Maybe Nathaniel knew then.

“Open the fucking safe!” Aaron shouted.

He turned the combination lock. It was awkward, at first, still holding the gun in his right hand and working clumsily with his left. Three full rotations, just to be safe, and then coming to a stop on the 30. A tiny click, nearly imperceptible. Now came 15. The footsteps from down the hall were coming closer. Andrew; Nathaniel recognized his gait. Nathaniel turned the lock to 20, and maybe he knew when the front of the safe released with a small hiss and swung open.

It was empty, other than the plain Manilla folder that lay in the center, almost a letdown after everything they had gone through to obtain it. Nathaniel reached inside, slid the folder out and tested the weight of it in his hands.

“Give it to me,” Aaron demanded, but Nathaniel was already opening it and slipping his free hand inside.

He knew, surely, before he looked. Before his hand closed around that tiny slip of paper, before he drew it out into the light and stared unseeing at the code Andrew had told him would set him free.

Nathaniel closed his fist around the paper, felt it crumble beneath his grip, and by the time Andrew appeared in the doorway it was nothing but ash sticking damply to the sweat on his skin. It didn’t matter, anyway. Nathaniel didn’t need a slip of paper to remember a six digit code. He’d known it for years.

“Did you get it?” Andrew asked. His face was beginning to take on a triumphant glow, the emotion he always worked so hard to conceal seeping through in the face of their impending success.

“I got it,” Nathaniel confirmed.

His hands were steady when he raised the gun. For all the lessons from his father that he’d failed to learn, he could shoot a gun with steady hands. The kick of it jerked his shoulder back, turned his body so that he almost didn’t see the impact. He saw the fall, though. For as long as he lived, he didn’t think he’d ever forget seeing Andrew’s body fall.

A beat passed in absolute silence.

“What did you do?” Nathaniel had never heard Aaron make that kind of sound before. Half-scream, half-moan.

“I shot him.”

“Why did you– fuck, you didn’t–“

“What does it matter?” Nathaniel couldn’t stop staring at where Andrew had fallen. His eyes were still open, lips parted in a sentence he had never gotten the chance to begin. Something in his chest ached, and he didn’t know why. “It’s just a dream.”

“He told you! Fuck, he already told you the sedative means he won’t just wake up, he’ll– fuck, fuck, fuck–”

Nathaniel dragged his eyes away from the body to look at Aaron. It was almost worse, looking at something that was almost Andrew but not quite.

“And why did you use the sedative? It wasn’t necessary, not really. Not if you only went two levels deep.” It was odd, how blank his voice sounded when he thought something inside him might shake apart.

Aaron stared at him for a long moment, mouth opening and closing, and Nathaniel watched the realization flood his eyes. Then the realization turned to fury.

“Fine,” he snarled, the same raw anger that always seemed to lurk just below Andrew’s surface. “Join him then.”

Everything moved slower in a dream. Even an artificial one. That was the secret to fighting in the subconscious. You had to know more than just the right movements, had to rely on more than just muscle memory. You needed to understand the parts of it that weren’t real, the parts where you could work the weaknesses of the dream and move just a little faster than you should, strike with just a little more force than you should. You had to know a second before the target would pull out their gun and start moving a second before that.

The impact of the gunshot slammed into Nathaniel just as the first notes of music began to echo into existence.

 

* * *

 

**48 Hours Before**

_Nathaniel was twenty-two when he got the news that his father was dead. He hadn’t recognized the number, at first; his father had never even told him that he’d hired a live-in nurse. But she’d known his name and the kinds of details that only those close to his father knew, and she had told him she was very sorry for his loss._

_His loss._

_There would be a funeral, she told him, in just a few days. His father had already made all the arrangements, knowing that the end was coming. Nathaniel couldn’t imagine his father ever acknowledging the fact that death might touch him, but, then again, he couldn’t imagine his father with cancer either. This would be the second funeral he’d ever attended; his father never trusted him enough to take him to commiserate allies or enemies._

_She tried to tell him more, something about grief counseling or maybe the will, but he stopped listening as soon as he knew the date and time they would put his father’s body in the ground. Nathaniel closed the phone, placed it back on the table in front of him, and stared at the wall ahead of him for several long moments. He was dead. Nathan Wesninski was dead._

_It didn’t seem real. He still expected the phone to ring again, for the nurse to say that there had been a mistake, that she worked for some other Wesninski and his father was still in Baltimore, still untouchable._

_The phone did ring again, but it wasn’t her._

_“Nathaniel Wesninski?”_

_“Who is this?” Nathaniel couldn’t recognize his own voice._

_“My name is Kevin Day. I understand you will be heading back to the States soon.”_

_He recognized the name. They had never worked together, but Day’s reputation was impossible to overlook; he was supposedly one of the best extractors in the business. It was partly due to those rumors that he had been unofficially exiled from West Virginia; Riko didn’t like to share the spotlight._

_Day cleared his throat through the phone, and Nathaniel realized that he had been silent for too long. “I will be, yes.”_

_For my father’s funeral, went unspoken. He was almost glad that Day didn’t try to offer his condolences._

_“I happen to be in Europe at the moment, but I will of course be returning to pay my respects. I thought we might travel together.”_

_“Travel together?” He was still moving through the world too slowly, his mind slowed to a crawl as time continued to flow around him._

_“I own a private jet; I see no reason for you to pay for a subpar airline.”_

_Another long pause. Nathaniel knew, in a far-away sense, that he should respond, but no words came to mind._

_“It is a long flight,” Kevin said at last. “You might as well be comfortable. Perhaps you will even get some sleep.”_

 

* * *

 

Nathaniel woke up in water. There was none of the panic of before, none of the frantic thrashing or desperation to breathe. He opened his eyes slowly, felt the waves lapping at his skin, closed his hand in the sand beneath him. He could taste the salt in the air, see lazy clouds drifting above him. He had never been on a beach before.

Eventually, minutes or maybe days later, he rolled onto his stomach and began the slow crawl to shore. The sand shifted underneath him, never quite holding its form. He didn’t think this was how real sand behaved, but it didn’t really matter. For a while, he was distracted by the endless task of making a handprint in the sand and watching the water rush to smooth it away.

Sometimes, he thought he felt blood dripping down his forehead or clumping on his skin, but the water beneath him never turned red.

There was a building in the distance. He recognized it vaguely, like a half-remembered dream on the cusp of waking. A warehouse, the only sign of human life on the endless beach. Months, maybe minutes later, he pushed himself to his feet and began to walk towards it.

Nathaniel had never been a particularly skilled architect. His training had centered almost entirely on forgery, and while he could dream up a thousand bodies or tools for himself, his talents rarely extended into the dream around him. Here, he thought he might try to learn. With so much empty space it seemed only natural to fill it. For now, he walked towards the warehouse.

His watch was back on his hand. By now it felt like a part of him, so natural that it took more effort to leave it off in a dream than to bring it with him. The second hand made its slow march around the face with a steady determination; the minute hand never moved. Nathaniel knew it was important, but he couldn’t quite remember why.

Stepping inside the warehouse felt a little bit like waking up. He hadn’t realized how dizzy he was until he leaned against the wall, the first sturdy thing in a world of unformed sand. It was easier to remember what he was doing, in the cool of the warehouse. Easier to remember what he needed to do.

It was almost exactly the same as it had been before. Tiny details were off, textures of stone or plays of shadow that Aaron must have been the one to design in the first level, but Andrew had kept the basic aura of the place the same. The stairs creaked in just the right way as Nathaniel climbed them.

Andrew sat on the edge of the roof, feet dangling over empty space and a cigarette in his hand. Nathaniel watched him for a moment, wondered if he would see the blood from the bullet wound or if Andrew even remembered he had died. It was easy to forget, down here. A little easier to remember, though, when he looked at Andrew.

“Are you waiting for an invitation?” Andrew asked eventually, not turning away from the empty horizon.

 “How long have you been down here?”

Andrew shrugged, blowing out a plume of smoke that transformed into a thousand little sparks, twinkling as they fell like the tail end of a firework. “I don’t know. Forever, maybe.”

“Not that long. You’re still young,” Nathaniel pointed out.

“You’re not the only one who can forge, Nathaniel.” Andrew turned to face him, and for a second the sunlight made his hair shine silver instead of blond.

Nathaniel moved forward to join him on the edge, sitting down gingerly until their legs swung over the drop in tandem. His head still pounded vaguely, a reminder of a bullet that had never really existed.

“How much do you remember?” he asked.

Andrew paused, flicking a few embers from the cigarette. Nathaniel watched them spiral down, still glowing even when they finally reached the ground.

“How did you die?” Andrew asked instead of answering.

“Your brother shot me.”

Andrew considered that for a moment. “Did he?”

“You’re talented at extraction jobs, but you can both be idiots when it comes to each other. Of course he shot me. I killed you.”

Andrew nodded slowly, drawing in another breath of smoke. The length of the cigarette never seemed to dwindle, no matter how long they sat there. “When did you figure it out?”

“It’s my turn,” Nathaniel reminded him. “But I’ll give you an easier one. Where is my body right now?”

“Somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, I’d imagine. When did you figure it out?”

“I don’t know. Right before I shot you, maybe. Maybe right after.”

“I don’t suppose you showed Aaron the contents of the safe?”

“How do you even know the safe would have held the code you were looking for? I’ve got plenty of secrets I want to protect.”

Andrew shrugged. This time, when he blew out a cloud of smoke, it spiraled up and up into the air until it became another small cloud, hovering about ten feet above their heads.

“We’ve been careful to make you think of nothing but the code for the past few days.”

“And my token? In the bar, that first night. I didn’t realize.”

“I already told you, Nathaniel. We did our research; Nicky is a detailed architect. All we had to do was check your wrist once you’d boarded the plane.”

Nathaniel tried to remember the plane, but it was like grasping at smoke. He could vaguely recall the taxi he took to the airport, the ever-present tension of being in a moving car. Kevin had come to greet him, he thought, but he wasn’t sure. The plane had been smaller than he expected, but maybe just because he’d never seen a private jet before.

“What will they do now?” Nathaniel asked, giving up on trying to remember when it made the phantom wound in his head pulse.

“They don’t have the code?”

“I destroyed it as soon as I saw it.”

Andrew shrugged, not looking particularly bothered. “What does anyone do on an international flight to Baltimore with two brain-dead bodies and a fugitive? I imagine they’ll run.”

“Do you think they’ll keep the bodies alive?”

“Mine, maybe, if Aaron’s feeling sentimental. He’ll probably shoot you in the real world the moment he wakes up. Or wait until the plane lands, if he’s smart.”

In the house in South Carolina (or was it Baltimore?) they had been only minutes away from the kick. Down here, Nathaniel might live forever before Aaron woke up.

“Are you angry?” It hadn’t occurred to him to ask until now.

This time Andrew genuinely did look surprised. “What for?”

“Me shooting you. Ruining the job.”

“It was Kevin’s job. He’s the one who’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

“He helped you save your brother.” Nathaniel was almost certain of that, now, and Andrew didn’t deny it.

“I did everything I said I would.”

“You said you would shoot him?”

Andrew smiled around the cigarette in his mouth. “I improvised a little. You wouldn’t have left, otherwise.”

They sat in silence for a while. Nathaniel stared at the sand surrounding the warehouse, briefly imagined forming the familiar roads and architecture of Germany, maybe of Baltimore. A skyscraper built itself halfway up before collapsing. Nathaniel wondered when his body would start to form wrinkles, if he would look more or less like his father when he was an old man. He thought he might like to see Andrew as an old man.

But not here.

“We’re dreaming,” he said, decades or seconds later.

“Well noted.” Andrew’s cigarette never burned out.

“We should wake up.”

“Why?”

Nathaniel pondered the question and forgot himself for a while. Andrew passed him the cigarette and he remembered.

“This isn’t real.”

“It feels real to me,” Andrew said.

“It’s not enough.”

“You think you can ask for more?”

_“Ask me when we wake up_ ,” Andrew had told him.

“What were you going to do when the plane landed?”

Andrew took the cigarette back when it became clear that Nathaniel wasn’t smoking it. “I told you; I thought I’d go to sleep for a while. No reason I can’t start now.”

“We should wake up.” Nathaniel almost couldn’t remember why he kept saying it, but he knew it was important.

“Go ahead.”

Nathaniel leaned a bit further over the edge, imagined the rush of the drop. “Will you come with me?”

“I’m afraid of heights.” Nathaniel couldn’t tell if Andrew was lying.

Andrew tossed the cigarette over the rooftop and they both watched it fall to the sand below, burning a hole deep into the ground as if it might eventually reach the center of the Earth.

“You’ll have to talk to Kevin, if you wake up,” Andrew told him. “Aaron will want to kill you, but Kevin would trade my life for the code.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you came with me.”

“My dead mother was already disappointed in me, Nathaniel. I don’t have your motivation.”

“I’m not waking up for her.”

“No?”

“We both have commitments to the real world we need to keep.”

A funeral. A code. A promise, even if it hadn’t sounded like it at the time, “ _Ask me when we wake up._ ”

“And once those commitments are fulfilled?” Andrew asked.

Nathaniel looked at Andrew. The silver-blond of his hair, the curve of his jaw, the ice in his eyes. He remembered the callouses on Andrew’s thumb, the way they had caught against Nathaniel’s lips, and wondered if they would still be there in the waking world. _“Ask me when we wake up_.”

“I guess we make some new ones.”

Nathaniel looked at Andrew and Andrew looked back. There was no blood on his shirt but Nathaniel could still see him falling, could still feel the answering pounding in his own head. Two funerals, he had told himself once, was the most he would ever take. One death that broke him, one that would free him, and after that death would never touch him again until it was his own time. It was easier to dream than to die. Easier to die than to wake up.

Nathaniel stood and Andrew stood with him. The drop was longer, now, from the roof to the ground. Maybe Andrew had added a few stories; maybe the cigarette had burned away the sand beneath them. Clouds were beginning to blot out the clear blue sky; it would rain, soon.

“The code,” Nathaniel said, tasting the fear of handing over his life to destroy like the salt in the air, “is one. Nineteen. Twenty–”

A thumb against his lip. Skin against skin, heat against heat.

“Tell me when we wake up,” Andrew said, and they jumped.

 

* * *

 

**After**

Nathaniel’s head had fallen against the window as he slept, his whole body slumped in a deep curve that made his neck ache when he shifted. The plane was nicer than most he’d ever been on, with enough room for him to fully stretch his legs out in front of him and a seat wide enough to accommodate his movements, but he’d still feel better once he was back on the ground.

The first few moments after waking up, he kept his gaze fixed out the window. They were passing over water, the deep, stormy blue of the Atlantic like an endless void beneath him, only the occasional cloud obscuring his view of the world below. His cheek stuck briefly to the glass of the window when he turned his head.

Kevin Day sat across from him, face carefully blank but with the edge of tension still visible beneath the surface. He had tanned, skin approaching a golden brown, and his dark hair was beginning to curl past the ghosts of a crew cut. Below his eye, still faintly red around the edges, a chess piece was ingrained where a two had once been. When Nathaniel met his eyes he didn’t look away.

“Excuse me, sir.”

He hadn’t noticed the flight attendant until now. She smiled down at him, patient like she might have already tried to get his attention a few times. Her hair, bleached white except for the pastel colors that covered the last few inches, gleamed in the low lighting of the plane.

“Would you like me to take your glass?” she asked.

Nathaniel glanced down, found that he was still holding an achingly familiar glass, the ice already long-melted into the dregs of the drink. He held it out to her wordlessly, tried to remember what had been in it.

“We’ll be touching down in Baltimore in just a few hours,” she told him.

Behind her, towards the back of the plane, a dark blue curtain concealed the second half of the cabin. He had originally assumed it was where the flight attendant stored the drinks and food and whatever else someone who owned a private jet might think to ask for. He wondered if there was a bullet waiting for him behind it.

She turned to go, and Nathaniel reached out to stop her in an instinctual reaction. “Wait.”

She paused, serene smile still in place. “Yes?”

“I don’t think I’ll be going to Baltimore, today.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I think I’ll be accompanying Mr. Day to South Carolina, though. I have some commitments I need to attend to.”

The attendant and Nathaniel both looked to Kevin for his response. Kevin took Nathaniel in for a moment longer, not quite smiling. His paralyzed hand lifted to brush lightly against the shoulder where a dreamt bullet had once lodged, the gesture looking almost unconscious.

“Your father’s commitments are waiting for you in Baltimore,” Kevin told him.

“I know. These ones are my own.”

Kevin didn’t smile, but the approval in his eyes was worth more than that. “I’ll speak to the pilot.”

Nathaniel nodded. When he stood, neither the flight attendant nor Kevin stopped him. He walked over to the curtain, paused with his hand against the fabric.

_Ask me when we wake up_.

Nathaniel glanced at his watch, let out a breath, and pushed the curtain aside.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and stanza at the beginning come from Poe’s “A Dream Within a Dream.” 
> 
> I hope everyone liked it! Thanks for reading; I’d love to know what you thought of it!


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